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Integrating 2

By Christina Darras

Christina Darras loves the procedure of embroidery, calms her mind. She loves the coloured threads, the needles, the white canvas, the time one spends on it. Embroidery instantly slows down one’s rhythms, taking them from hectic to slow, tic toc, old style time. She builds her images to the unknown, colour by colour, feeling what should go next more than thinking. These embroideries took her long time to finish. She started making them when preparing to move to Australia and finished working on them two years after. It is a slow, self-healing process, reassuring oneself that everything is going to be alright.

Their theme evolves to portraits integrating to their surroundings focusing on integration, adaptation.

In 2016 she visited the NGV exhibition on embroidery and quilts and saw some amazing works made by women migrating to Australia in the late 19th century. Most of them were embroidered while being on the ship on their long way to Australia. She related to these women although her trip was much sorter to their sentimental journey and the healing practice of embroidery is the common ground.

hand embroidery 57x57cm framed