sydney christiaans

My stockpile of fabrics consists of, but is not limited to, shower curtains, window treatments, worn bath towels, yarn, chiffon, and miscellaneous fabric scraps I’ve collected. For many, the home is filled with well-loved, worn, or passed-down materials, where each mark or stain tells a story. These materials contain daily gestures within the home: cleaning up a coffee spill, mending a well-loved quilt, or grabbing a stained rag to dry the dishes. I reimagine second-hand fabrics by suspending, draping, scrunching, staining, stitching, sewing, and collaging materials together. Fabrics are ironed, and edges are hemmed, while splatters and nonsensical stitching remain.

The anxieties and comfort within the home push and pull, together shaping what the home becomes. In art, and in life, I’m “making-do” with what I have, my emotions, my burdens, and living spaces, as I attempt to stitch together the pieces to make sense of it all. Within my work, these familiar yet discarded materials are collaged together to reimagine household tapestries, symbolizing the spectrum of stress and mundanity within the home. Works like Tea Towel present a collage of pristine, staged images of the home, disrupted by staining and haphazard stitching that reveal underlying insecurities beneath its maintained surface. Stitching together these second-hand materials reframes them with new life while emphasizing the beauty found in their use and decay.