Soul in the Thread
by Nisan Yetkin
Persecution and resilience, erasure and struggle, unpaid, forced and unrecognised labour characterise women’s history. The feminine or anything perceived as such was gazed at rather than understood. An archetype to either worship or annihilate, use or protect, love or hate. Often, the two extremes can go hand in hand. Love Madonna and kill the whore (love her first, too). Soul in the Thread: Codes Past and Present, invites you on a visual odyssey into the history of women’s struggle and creative expression in the face of adversity.
Using embroidery as a tool for storytelling, Soul in the Thread echoes the carpet weavers, who, to this day, are overwhelmingly women who use motifs to express their deepest desires, wishes, and burdens, in often exploitative work conditions.
It is also a radical stance against a fully digital, crypto-capitalist art market driven by investments rather than substance.
About the Artist
Nisan Yetkin (she/her) is a self-taught artist based in Turkey. After completing her BA in history at the University of York, she returned to Istanbul as a freelance artist. With a passion for comic books, animated films, and graphic novels, she started researching alternative ways of tackling history, politics, and social issues through her work. She co-directed and animated the documentary “I don’t want to call it home”. She is the artist behind the animations in the documentary, “Spit It Out” and has since been working on various projects involving animation and illustration