In every part of the world, across cultures and throughout history, textiles have been used to make and share art. It’s flexible and able to take the form of quilting, weaving, printmaking or sewing. The art form has been passed down through generations, and its purpose ranges from decorative to utilitarian to revolutionary. Rima Day is an artist and costume designer who was born in Tokyo, Rima Day uses thread, fabric and paper to create artwork that is inspired by nature and the human body.

With a background in fashion design and garment construction, Day is also inspired by 17th to 19th-century sartorial history. Considering feminine garments worn during this time period, the artist contemplates emotions that women may have felt while they wore complicated and restrictive attire. Portraying passion through the color red and using clothing as her canvas, she reflects on how women often had to conceal their true desires, hopes, and liveliness under the constrictions of social standards that dictated their clothing.

Pondering the beguiling aspects of human experience, Rima Day (previously) embroiders a labyrinth of undulating root systems and sinuous veins. Cascading across a cyanotype, surging from the center of a delicate corset, or proliferating from the gutter of an open book, each of Day’s fiber iterations call to the notion of connection. Although these threads formally mimic capillary connections and circulatory systems, they simultaneously ponder the microcosmic relationship between emotions and the entangled pathways that frame our world and bodies.