Paper and Threads – A Mapping of Intimacy

In the field of material-based art practices, paper and threads might seem like simple materials—familiar, delicate, and traditional. Yet when brought together, they generate a complex terrain of memory, gesture, and structure. This article explores the deeply interconnected relationship between these two cellulose-based materials—how they operate, how they speak to the body, and how they shape the field of contemporary crafted installation.

Both paper and threads originate from natural fibers, usually from plant sources such as cotton, flax, or mulberry. They are products of labor and transformation—processed, pressed, spun, dried. As such, they carry within them the history of making. Paper records impressions; it absorbs every act. Threads, too, act as conductors of gesture, tension, rhythm, and attachment. When these materials are brought together, they do more than hold—they suggest. They insinuate the unseen: an internal map, a scar, a presence made visible.

The act of stitching paper is one that challenges the conventional expectations of both materials. Paper is not fabric, and yet it is pierced. Threads are not ink, and yet they write. This contradiction makes every intervention—every stitch, loop, tear, or puncture—carry a kind of tension. It is a negotiation between fragility and force. The needle becomes a drawing tool. The paper, an anatomical site.

Much of this practice is rooted in the history of labor, and specifically, the often invisible labor of textile work. While embroidery and stitching are typically associated with domestic craft, their adaptation into the world of visual art disrupts their cultural expectations. When stitched into paper, the thread does not just decorate—it becomes structural, relational, even confrontational. These interventions demand a viewer’s attention not only to form but to process—to the labor of making, to its residue.

One of the most compelling aspects of using threads on paper is their ability to build space. Layered works, sewn maquettes, perforated installations—these are not simply images but architectures of sensation. The thread traverses layers, marking pathways, bridging voids, suspending weight. And here, the artist becomes a cartographer—mapping gestures, pressure, and memory onto the surface. What is documented is not the world but a topography of thought, intimacy, and repetition.

In my own practice, these materials converged not through concept but through necessity. The early paper works—often too delicate to glue—needed an alternative system of connection. The sewing machine offered that solution, and more: it allowed for precision, rhythm, invisibility, and obsession. Over time, the act of piercing, first with thread and then without, became a way of sculpting paper without removing it. Topographies formed. Skins thickened. The thread, eventually, disappeared—but its trace remained.

As the work evolved, the range of tools expanded. Classic sewing machines, limited in their capacity for slow, delicate stitching, gave way to handheld leather tools, speedy awls, and industrial or crank-based shoemaker models that could accommodate thicker materials and larger formats. Punch needles and Aari hooks, traditionally used in embroidery and beadwork, became essential not just for their ability to handle paper without tearing but for the way they permitted a rhythm of repetition guided by the hand. These tools allowed the labor to become visible—not as decoration but as insistence.

Alongside machine-based methods, hand-sewn works have remained integral. Their tempo, fragility, and responsiveness give rise to a different language. A slower one. A form of correspondence. When working with threads on paper, the thread is not merely a connector; it is a sensor. A line of communication between hand and material, often carrying weight, even when it leaves no visible mark.

In recent years, my experiments have included collaborative stitching, tension drawings, salt-based absorption studies, and dissecting images with thread. Each technique is not an end in itself, but a means of tracking. I find myself less interested in decoration and more in what remains: the scar, the edge, the shift. The practice of stitching and piercing becomes, in this way, a method of mapping—the unknown, the unsaid, the intimate.

To map is to listen—to attend to what is present but unnoticed. A map, in this context, is not a territory but a question. What is remembered? What is touched? Where does form emerge, and where does it dissolve? The practice with paper and threads is a mapping of tension, absence, and presence. A mapping of time.

Ultimately, the dialogue between paper and threads opens a new grammar for working. It asks: How do we connect without holding too tightly? How do we inscribe without dominating? What becomes visible when we work with, rather than on, a surface? These questions remain at the core of this article, and of the broader installation-based explorations I continue to pursue.

The stitch is not only a joining—it is a direction. It points, it leads, it anchors. And when used in dialogue with paper, it does not just bind. It maps. It marks. It remembers.