Held Together: A debut series exploring tension, restraint, and what keeps us from falling apart

Held Together begins with fabric that has already lived. Reclaimed muslin curtains, natural cotton and linen gathered over time. Materials that carry the quiet evidence of use and age.

Drawn to beauty found in decay, I dyed, cut, and manipulated these textiles by hand, working intuitively to discover how they responded to stress - to pulling, pinching, folding, and compression.

The work grew from a practice of restraint. As a photographer I have always worked with negative space, allowing what is absent to carry as much meaning as what is present. Here I resisted the impulse to add- more stitches, more fabric, more thread- until each piece held only what it needed.

The result is a series about tension. Not just the physical tension visible in gathered cloth and pulled thread, but the tension of holding on.

Each piece asks how much pressure a material, or a person, can absorb before it gives way. The answer, again and again, is more than you'd expect.

What feels like it's barely holding together often becomes, in hindsight, something whole.