Monkey Business

Throughout time and across cultures, the three wise monkeys are iconic visual cues to ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’ While originally intended to urge humans to embody positive thought and action, in contemporary culture, the monkeys more often depict our willingness to turn a blind eye, a deaf ear or to remain silent in the face of injustice, or evil.

Today, what have we become willingly blind to? Our textile stories address these urgent themes:

From the endangered coral reef- once brilliantly colorful and alive, and now rapidly dying and transforming into shades of colorless grey- to the precious iconic flora of Socotra, a magical island off the coast of Yemen, itself a country entrenched in a conflict forgotten/ overlooked by the international community.

In our textile stories, monkeys- a reflection of ourselves- frolick across a tactile landscape of bleeding trees and fading coral reefs, occupied with their distractions- a beauty mask, headphones, and emojis. At the same time, images of magnificent nature – like the desert rose tree- continue to blossom in lively shades of pink thread, capturing the delicate balance and battle between nature and human that is so present in our time.