[LifeStyle] The art of photographic embroidery or how to transform the recent past with a needle and thread

[Mr.Hacker]

 

On the work table of Garbiñe Muñoz (San Sebastián, 38 years old), better known by her stage name Garbi Galatea, there are needles, scissors, awls and threads of all colors. Also hundreds of photographs, bits of other people's lives or her own that, consciously or purely by chance, have ended up in her hands. And, in her hands, a needle. He selects one of the photographs on the table: a snapshot of an unknown couple, a man and a woman, in black and white, dating from the 1960s, judging by their clothes and hairstyles. Immediately after, she begins to meticulously sew the man's face: "It seems important to me to relive memories, but it is also important that bad memories can be covered, I think the process has something of a healer."

Garbi Galatea uses the photographic embroidery technique as the surgeon uses the threads to close a wound. In her project, Erased Embroidery, she covers the faces of men who have invaded or assaulted a woman with threads of pastel shades, traditionally feminine. It is a personal project, but also a collective one: “The women tell me their testimony and I search my photo archive until I find a photo that is similar to that situation. For example, if a girl experienced an invasion by her father, I try to find a photo of a father and a daughter, the same age as she was at that time, and then I cover it up, delete it, delete it”.
"I always say that this technique is like doing Photoshop in a manual and artistic way," Lorena Olmedo, a plastic artist specializing in photography and textile embroidery, explains to EL PAÍS and who, like Garbi, gives workshops to get started in the world of embroidery. photographic. A technique, an art and even an unconventional form of therapy that, like other activities related to crafts such as crochet or pottery, has experienced a surge of interest during and, especially, after confinement, either to channel artistic expression, to stimulate the imagination, to free ourselves from daily stress or to disconnect from the noisy world that surrounds us.

https://elpais.com/estilo-de-vida/2023-04-06/el-arte-del-bordado-fotografico-o-como-transformar-el-pasado-reciente-con-aguja-e-hilo.html