Daughter, Held, 2026
27 x 72 x 12in
Steel metal pipes, mulberry silk yarn, nylon stockings, polyfil, latex
Daughter, Held considers the body as something simultaneously supported and strained. Suspended between two industrial steel bars, a hand-crocheted silk panel hangs under tension, pierced by irregular openings that resemble wounds, membranes, or points of passage; porous. Skin-colored stockings are stretched across and through the structure, pulling the work outward until the material becomes thin, translucent, and near rupture. Soft hanging forms weighted throughout the piece introduce gravity as an active force, causing the sculpture to sag, pull, and continuously negotiate its own balance.
The work draws from the language of the body, domestic labor, and inheritance. Crochet, a process historically tied to care, repetition, and femininity, is transformed into a load-bearing structure. The stockings operate like a second skin: elastic, vulnerable, and intimate, while also acting as a mechanism of containment. Together, the materials suggest a body asked to hold more than it can comfortably carry.
The title Daughter, Held exists in tension between comfort and restraint. To be held can mean to be protected, carried, or loved, but it can also imply being fixed in place, suspended, or unable to escape pressure. The sculpture inhabits this unstable space between tenderness and control, where softness becomes structural and endurance becomes inherited.
