artifacts of darkness...

I had seen the hair purse piece by artist Tabitha Kyoko Moses awhile back and just recently looked at her work a bit more. Though the hair purse is gorgeous as an object I am personally more compelled and intrigued by her other works. The above images are from her series' Brides and Grooms.

much of her work seems to be about collection in some way as she generally shows her work in groupings and displays them similar to museum/artifact displays. Using cases, pins, labels, etc. She actually showed her Dolls series amongst old artifacts in a museum.


She often uses hair as her medium of choice- the gorgeous work below is embroidered out of her. You can read a translation here. What I do love about her use of hair and her work in general is the subtle simple palette.



The history of object and place inspire her work in intriguing ways... sometimes in dark ways.
An article by Alex Michon states:

Tabitha Kyoko Moses is a collector, a rag and bone archivist of the peripheral. Her studio in the aptly Victorianesque sounding Bridewell area of Liverpool is full of the faded ephemera and unwanted residual fragments of material existence. Dolls dressed in nuns' habits, faded froufrou petticoats, mother of pearl buttons, taupe and cadet blue stained silk dresses, old parchments and starched white muslin pleated bibs jostle with more psychologically potent relics such as her collection of human bones and newspaper cuttings of real-life grisly murders.

I find these hand embroidered works that reference advertisements for "massage parlours" and such intriguing and is a way remind me of Annette Messager's work where she embroidered statements about women on white handkerchiefs.


Tabitha has a very diverse body of work and seems to have lately dove into the world of performance so please stop over to her website to get inspired and intrigued.