By Charlotte Pyatt
In an age of automated velocity, Sheena Liam works stitch by stitch, exploring female interiority through a medium that once contained it.
Executed entirely in dark green thread on raw canvas, these embroidered works of women at rest consider the architecture of time as much as the image. One continuous backstitch binds the figures to the canvas, while another self-developed method pulls hair into braids and away from it. Disrupting the boundaries between image and object, her compositions are deceptively simple on the surface, but through her reverence for process we are offered through the inverse, space to discover the complexity and labour of their making. Each is the result of countless ties, knots and broken thread; a poetic reflection of all that is unseen, tangled just beneath the appearance of poise.
This emotional landscape draws from her lived experience of ballet and modelling, where the body serves as an instrument with identity secondary. Now directing the frame herself, Sheena creates a different reality, one free from performance or outcome. Bodies lounge, slouch and lean, the negative space preserved around them seemingly as important as the figures themselves. Without context or colour, her characters exist expansively in the present, inviting the viewer to do the same. Their ordinary state of being essential to their becoming, requiring neither validation nor acknowledgement.
The thread is not without its own expectations. Histories of craft and domesticity, femininity and Asian heritage come with their own inherited assumptions. Rather than unravel them, Sheena plays with their weight, shifting familiar patterns into new sequences: domesticity becomes self-determination, repetition becomes agency and stillness becomes power. Not in rebellion against what has been, but in honour of simply what is.
Charlotte Pyatt is an independent Creative Director working at the intersection of culture and sustainable action. She consults with Artists, Brands NGOs and organisations to champion the role of culture and the importance of conscious curation. Charlotte is a fellow of the RSA (Royal Society of the Arts), has an accreditation from Harvard for Sustainable Business Strategies and a BA with hons in Art History.