(MIN038) [........]

While experimenting with silvery velvet circles on a dark background, I remembered an article from the magazine Der Spiegel. It told the story of a young Russian woman who had eight small dots tattooed on her arm as a protest against the war in Ukraine. They stand for "нет войне", "No to war". A statement that is absolutely forbidden in Russia and that you could go to prison for. The background is machine quilted with dense parallel lines. The velvet dots were made with the help of paper templates that were left inside. They were hand appliqued to the background and hand quilted with metallic thread. Depending on how the light falls on them, the dots appear to be mat or shimmer or shine brightly. The 8 dots representing the words that must not be spoken were handstitched with a single metallic thread onto the dark background. Fragile, almost invisible.