Mattress Work

These soft sculptures reference sleeping mats and provisional mattresses – both the mats that are laid out on the floor in refugee centers, and the mats used in kindergardens at nap time in Central/Eastern Euope and elsewhere. The work is informed by my personal history as a child refugee and my experience as a member of a diaspora. The works are covered in textiles that are sewn together using found, upcycled and vintage textiles, and digitally printed fabrics.

In their form and scale, these works directly reference the body, with other associations that can change depending on the works’ grouping and arrangement. They can evoke precarity, preparedness, a disembodied domestic space and also be a place of rest. This work is also informed by Richard Serra’s early steel Props, and interrogates what new associations come to Serra’s experiments with balance and position when the material is not heavy cold and industrial but instead soft, shifting, and unstable.

2022 – ongoing

Mattress Study 8 (storage)
2024. Upholstery foam, fabric. Dimensions variable

Mattress Study 9 (stack)
2024. Upholstery foam, fabric. Dimensions variable

Mattress Study (prop 2)
2024. Upholstery foam, fabric. Dimensions variable

Orange Crush
2022. Upholstery foam, digitally printed and quilting cotton. 28 x 33 x 10” (71 x 84 x 25cm

Nostalgia
2022. Upholstery foam, digitally printed cotton and polyester. 36 x 70 x 3.5” (91 x 178 x 9cm

Untitled (Bedsheet)
2022. Upholstery foam, bed sheet, digitally printed cotton. 36 x 70 x 3.5” (91 x 178 x 9cm)