The making of “A Stitch out of Time”

Artist Anaïs Beaulieu will be presenting her book “A stitch out of Time”, a project developed together with the publisher Tara Books. In this conversation the artist will talk about how embroidery can merge with bookmaking, and how such slow processes can create a metaphorical mirror to plant growth in nature contrasting with throw-away culture.

To embroider is to render a drawing on a piece of rag which turns into a treasure. It is a dream come true, ready for any use. The embroidery replaces the tattoo we have on the skin, the bag, the tablecloth, the curtain.
But it is exceptional to think of embroidering on plastic—as this is a material that points to the convenience of packaging, with the prospect of ephemeral use. We plan to throw it away. True, but no, we can’t throw it away. We must keep it, recycle it or simply avoid getting it. What then are we to do with all the lost bags, some of which cling to the thorns of the bushes on the side of the roads, in the savannahs, sometimes even in the heart of the desert?

Anaïs Beaulieu embroiders them. No one has thought of it. It’s unexpected, surprising, right within the concerns of our time. The embroidered subject settles into the vegetable kingdom on a shiny and smooth surface, turning into a luxury item. It’s unexpected.
So we can say that there is always a poetic way out, to transgress the rules of decorum by reversing accepted values: waste—whatever the circumstance—nature, aesthetic aspects that verge on the repulsive... all this becomes the basis of the project.
There is plenty to do. A new flora is born. 

– Gilles Clément on Anais Beaulieu’s work