Urban Witness

A woman looks at us. Silent, strong and present. Her hair is made of leaves: textile fragments of nature shaped within a world of straight lines. 

This sustainable textile artwork is built on a discarded black-and-white photograph of New York City a symbol of the ultimate concrete jungle. A landscape of stone, steel and glass, where natural forms are rare. By layering my image onto this urban backdrop, a tension between human presence and the environment arises. Tension between nature and the expanding city.

The photographic image itself is not mine. It’s a found object. That, too, is intentional. This piece is not just about reuse, but about recoding. About seeing what already exists and reshaping it into something new.

But the story extends beyond New York. I now live in the Netherlands, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The call for more housing, more economy, more growth is relentless. But with every piece of land that’s built over, something is lost. 

This sustainable textile artwork is a quiet protest, but also a gesture of care. As long as we keep looking there is still something left to protect.

This tension reflects broader questions raised in biophilic design.

Discover more works from the series Patterns of Life