MY HANDS EXIST AND WITH THEM I CREATE PROBLEMS AND ART.
To grasp something is to care for it, to hold space for its weight, and to insist on its relevance.
The dual meaning of the word grasp speaks to this intersection: it is both a physical act of holding and a cognitive act of understanding.
A deep interest in tangibility lies at the heart of my practise – what it means to hold, feel and understand in an increasingly digitised and disembodied world. My work is a multidisciplinary exploration grounded in fibre, installation, and expanded archival forms. I’m drawn especially to textiles for their associations with care, craft, femininity, and domestic labour, and the way they hold quiet subvertive power.
The slow, intimate labour of stitching demands presence, and through that presence, invites emotional and intellectual connection. As society grows more virtual, we are exposed to an overwhelming stream of injustices, yet without material grounding, these experiences rarely provoke a visceral response and we become desensitised. Tactile practices like fibre art reintroduce the body, the hand, and the labour behind care.
In this way, my work often operates as a dialogue between the body and the systems that seek to contain it. I examine touch as a form of thought, how fibre can allow us not to just learn about the world, but to feel our way through it.
found objects. Photographer: Zahra O’Dea.
found objects. Photographer: Zahra O’Dea.
found objects. Photographer: Zahra O’Dea.
The hand, often overlooked, becomes central in this way of working. It is through our hands that we create, we mend, we collect and gather, we push back, and we hold tight to each other.
Alongside this, I use video and photography to explore tangibility in less physical, but equally embodied, ways. I aim to examine how moving image and documentation can convey sensations or experiences that resist easy translation.
Across these different forms, my practice searches for the points where touch, emotion, and critique meet; where making becomes not just an act of creation, but a means of understanding and being in the world.
This work was created on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation.
Enquiries: zahraodea@gmail.com
Instagram: @odea_studio