EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Negin Mahzoun
I return to the same image repeatedly, not to preserve it, but to test its endurance. I begin with a photograph of my own body printed on fabric. The image is not a fixed representation; it is a surface that invites intervention.
What follows is slow and sustained. I stitch into the fabric again and again, responding to tension, resistance, and the pressure of my hands. With repetition, the photograph loosens and shifts. It does not vanish; it becomes unstable, fragmented, partially obscured, altered through contact.
The needle does not follow a predetermined pattern. Each stitch emerges in relation to the material. Through accumulation, the body moves from something meant to be seen into something materially inscribed. Likeness gives way to presence; surface becomes record.
Sewing is both method and inquiry. The same gesture that binds also pierces. Repair does not erase incision, and incision does not cancel care. I am drawn to this unstable coexistence, where restraint and protection occupy the same action.
I am not interested in resolution. I allow gestures to layer and time to press into the fabric. The body in my work is not an image to be consumed; it is a surface that absorbs, remembers, and resists completion.
What remains is not a narrative, but a material trace of labor, attention, and sustained contact.
