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November 7, 2007 10:09 am
Parents who in pre-feminist days restricted their daughters’ creativity to the dainty art of embroidery would have confiscated their needles in horror if they had foreseen the sort of work being presented at New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design this month. Beginning on November 8, “Pricked: Extreme Embroidery” presents 40 international artists, male and female, who express political, personal, and sexual messages in a medium more often associated with tea towels and doll dresses. Apart from piercing the gender prejudices that the traditionally ladylike medium can summon up, artists in the show use pretty-hued thread and delicate stitches (though some do embroider with human hair and skin peels) to highlight complicated issues. San Francisco-based Benji Whalen, for example, makes stuffed cloth arms that he covers with ornate prison tattoos. And Orly Cogan (above) salvages discarded vintage fabrics that she uses as the canvas for her autobiographical doodlings and fantasies. For more information, see www.madmuseum.org.
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