Collaboration hand embroidered textile artwork

Règne Végétal is a hand embroidered textile artwork created from a two month collaboration for Les Partisan.e.s 2nd edition with textile designer Maud Lerayer from Behind The Hill.
Les Partisan.e.s is a collaborative project enthusiastically led by Caroline Pelletti-Victor for l’Annexe in Marseille. In 2024 this process has involved almost 90 artists, artisans and designers to create more than 50 art or crafts pieces.

Maud designs modern textiles highlighting a very rare and little-known cotton that grows naturally colorful in a handful of villages around the world.

As a textile artist, I embroider inner landscapes inspired by emotions or life stories, and mineral textures.

The human aspect of our respective practices, our enthusiasm for the imperfections of the material, and a palette of colors inspired by soils, are all elements that make our collaboration a natural fit for this second edition of Les Partisan.e.s.

Once we agreed on the shape of the art piece, we worked together on the composition. Only fabric scraps were used to give new life to pieces that should have been thrown away. Finally, I worked more than forty hours on the embroidery which enhances the cotton fabric.

Our piece is a tribute to the indigenous women from villages who seed, cultivate, crop, spine and weave rare cottons in order to keep their traditional culture alive.
The organic shape of the embroidery stitches evokes the plant kingdom which regains its rights and flourishes after human colonization.

Cotton thread embroideries on various naturally colored cotton fabric pieces from Mexico
l56cm x h 132cm
April 2024

Pictures 2 & 3 by Laure Melone, others by Maud Lerayer except last one.