Deborah Hirshfield

I work in textiles — primarily dyed, molded, and sewn silk, sometimes in combination with metal, plastic, chains, motors or other contrasting materials — to explore themes of sexuality and sensuality, gender fluidity, procreation, and transformation. My practice is rooted in my lived experience as a woman in a sexist society, and in dialogue with current political events and shifting contemporary perspectives. My impulse finds resonance in my upbringing: raised in a household of artists and poets and shaped by the cultural ferment of the 1960s. 

Silk, with its ethereal delicacy and translucent layers, becomes for me a metaphor for identity — fluid, shifting, multifaceted. When I dye, mold, or stitch it — or juxtapose it with hard, industrial materials — I aim to give that light, fleeting material a presence, a weight, a voice. The result is work that knits together vulnerability and resilience, softness and strength, intimacy and confrontation.

For me, the act of making is not just aesthetic — it is a form of resistance, exploration, and testimony. Through fiber I examine how identities are woven, how bodies are inscribed, how personal and political histories intersect. My work asks the viewer to look — closely, and deeply — at what lies beneath surfaces: vulnerability, transformation, memory, and possibility.