BR GOLDSTEIN

Mood Indigo, Saudade.

March 16 – April 27, 2025

I started working with textiles in 2018, and since that time I have kept all of the remnants from all of my projects. In 2023 I suddenly had to move back to my hometown of Toronto Canada, I had to leave a life I had spent 7 years building including my studio and artistic practice.  All of the work in this show comes from these remnants: some previous projects, some household linens, some items I bought for projects at the Scrap Exchange and Trosa in Durham, that have, as of now, travelled 1500mi with me. This project captures the moment when the structures, habits, and frameworks that once held my life together—emotional, physical, and practical—started to break down. The mechanisms I relied upon were suddenly absent and I was left confronting instability and disorder.

My projects use repurposed, low quality, ultimately disposable industrial textiles found in our everyday lives.  Textile waste is off-shored, we get feel unburdened by them because of our good intentions in the form of donations, only to have them become a problem for others to deal with overseas.  Every scrap has been hand dyed with Indigo which is deposited in layers, to achieve darkest colours the fabrics have to be dipped and dried 10-20 times, the machine sewing used as dye resist are a form of mark making to indicate my presence.

I am interested in the physical properties of materials as the primary driver of form. The interactions with my materials are governed by what they are made of and the previous dyes I have used on them, irregularities and asymmetries in the found materials have been intentionally unaltered as I assemble what I have left. My actions emphasize the texture, surface and transformation over time, mostly allowing materials to dictate the outcome rather than my imposition of control.

I am a member of a textile art co-operative in Toronto, where most of the members work with Indigo in some form and have studied it’s use with crafts people in India, Pakistan, Denmark and Japan. I call this place my artistic home, at the moment, and the indigo has come to represent this place, Indigo is also inextricably linked to the history of North Carolina, it provides the bridge between the two places. 

The fraying and decaying materials in my work has always indicated a kind of systemic collapse. Saudade is a Portuguese word that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of longing, nostalgia, or melancholy, and can refer to missing a loved one, a past experience, or even a place, with the recognition that what is longed for will never return. Suadade is a kind of grief caused by displacement and the historical moment in which we currently find ourselves.

My heartfelt gratitude to Syd Wood for all her assistance with this project and the support and knowledge of the members of the Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op of Toronto, Canada.

HORACE WILLIAMS HOUSE

March 16 – April 27, 2025

610 East Rosemary Street

Chapel Hill, NC 27514

919.942.7818

ARTIST RECEPTION

Sunday, March 16th, 2-4 PM

Or by appointment, contact Nerys Levy neryslevy@gmail.com or Tama Hochbaum tamahochbaum19@gmail.com