Brooklyn-based Zoë Buckman has made her title by way of a daring method to textile and embroidery—a medium lengthy related to subordinate feminine labor—reworking it from a vessel of generational reminiscence right into a stage for broader sociopolitical commentary and denunciations. In her work, embroidery strikes from the home sphere into the political, turning historically feminized labor right into a mode of testimony whereas additionally celebrating and crystallizing intimate moments as representations of broader, common human states.
Buckman’s apply has lengthy centered on gender disparities, difficult representations of girls by asserting—by way of her authorship—not solely management over the traditionally masculine gaze but additionally the autonomy of expression and self-definition that emerges by way of an inverted dynamic empowering her topics in each their bodily and emotional realities. Along with her newest present, which opened throughout Artwork Basel Miami Seaside at Mindy Solomon Gallery, the artist shifts towards a wider lens, in search of to assert the dignity of—and elevate—the Jewish neighborhood she belongs to, shifting past stereotyped portrayals and addressing the discrimination and isolation it has confronted amid the continued backlash to the conflict in Gaza.
Buckman’s background was initially in images, she explains to Observer as we stroll by way of the present. Pictures stays the start line for these embroideries, permitting her to seize the humanity of her topics because it manifests within the second.
“I began in images. That was the place I acquired my artwork schooling,” she explains, noting how she nonetheless goes all over the place along with her little movie point-and-shoot digital camera. “I’m all the time searching for that real, genuine expression past any type of construction—the second: these genuine moments between folks in my life,” Buckman provides. “Typically it’s between me and somebody near me, or typically it’s only a second when humanity occurs to manifest.”
Drawing its title from Leonard Cohen’s haunting reinterpretation of the Jewish prayer Unetaneh Tokef, the exhibition’s themes of mortality, judgment and religious reckoning and reawakening echo by way of Jewish ritual and lived expertise. Every topic is depicted in a second of inside reawakening—confronting emotional fragility and vulnerability whereas additionally embracing the expansive potential of their inside life. They share this richness intentionally, even when such imaginative and psychological responses run counter to the rational programs of productiveness and performance that dominate modern life—a society that, in doing so, seems to have misplaced considered one of its most profound values: empathy and the attention that we’re all interconnected in a community of significant interdependencies past racial, spiritual or social classes shaping right now’s divisions and deepening polarization.
Based mostly on images of household and neighborhood members in intimate, home settings, these works invite us to acknowledge shared humanity past classification. Within the course of, the artist undertakes a deeply private exploration of Jewish identification by way of cultural and materials rituals that protect intergenerational reminiscence and embody collective resilience—whereas additionally probing the universality of those personal moments and emotional states.
All through her apply, Buckman employs an unique visible lexicon that mixes ink and acrylic portray on classic home textiles, which she then hand-embroiders. Stitching and stitching these threads across the pictures to assist these moments materialize with emotional heat is a time-intensive course of—one which inherently displays the dedication and care required by all real and significant human encounters.
Combining introspection, tenderness and radical presence, the uncooked sensual symbolism and materiality of those works function as each mirror and balm. “Once I first began, I used to be celebrating the custom itself—the craftsmanship, the legacy of girls, the historical past behind embroidery and appliqué,” Buckman explains. Stitching turns into a strategy to retrace that thread, reconnect with that legacy and hold it alive, because the textile work regains its ancestral operate as an archive—a repository of private and collective reminiscence and storytelling. The textile and embroidery medium absorbs expertise like pores and skin: delicate sufficient to bear wounds, but sturdy sufficient to endure dealing with, mending and reconfiguration. Nonetheless, the way in which threads come free or start to fall away gestures towards a unique studying, as Buckman notes. “It’s a query of what exists past the custom. Are these figures rising, or are they disappearing?”
Thread holds time; turning into presence and determine, every sew marks a second, a alternative, a return—an accumulative document of presence that resists erasure. But Buckman additionally makes room for disintegration. The undone high quality that defines her work permits for imperfection and visual labor, acknowledging and honoring the delicate humility of human historical past in all its ephemeral, transient nature.
“There’s this stress within the thread: it appears to be like prefer it’s holding every little thing collectively, however it’s additionally coming aside,” Buckman observes. “I’m enjoying with that second the place the picture feels prefer it’s both dissolving or coming collectively—exactly that house.”
A lot of Buckman’s current work, as she admits, has centered on grief, spirit, and connection, along with her inventive apply turning into a method of sustaining bonds with these she has misplaced. She sews her trauma immediately into cloth, because the slower tempo imposed by stitching, stitching, and embroidery permits her to pause and interrogate deeply private experiences and transitions. Solely by coming into that house of introspection and meditation—stepping exterior the relentless circulate of contemporary life—can one start to course of emotional change and, ideally, discover a house for therapeutic. Right here, reminiscence turns into one thing bodily and emotionally metabolized by way of the arms.
For the primary time, Buckman features a work on this present that additionally depicts a person. “My work about my relationships with males has often centered on the troublesome experiences I’ve had—issues that had been mentioned or finished to me,” she notes, acknowledging the piece as a doable step towards a extra tender place of reconciliation, therapeutic her battle and painful resentment with the masculine. The person in earlier than they grew to become an overview (2025) is definitely a homosexual pal, she explains. The picture distills a second of real admiration and affection between two associates, the place the female facet nonetheless stays the middle of emotional and psychological consideration and stress.
The male determine is trying down towards a blonde girl in his arms, the threads flowing round her physique. “That’s Katie. She’s the girl who has appeared most frequently in my work,” Buckman explains, expressing deep admiration for somebody who defies stereotypes: a nurse and two-time most cancers survivor who has endured numerous challenges but nonetheless holds a powerfully seductive and magnetic presence. “She misplaced her mum when she was 18, so we share that grief of not having our moms round. She’s been by way of related experiences to mine in terms of energy, to assault,” Buckman explains. “She’s probably the most audacious, so attractive. Whenever you meet her, when she walks right into a room, she instructions the house. She’s actually a muse for me: she’s endured a lot, and but she’s radically engaging.”
The topic of a lady with crimson hair in hint your ridges (2025) equally claims, fearlessly and unapologetically, all the eye her vitality and wonder demand. One of many only a few self-portraits Buckman has made, the piece relies on {a photograph} taken by her boyfriend, she explains. She had by no means beforehand allowed that type of dynamic into her work. However by doing so now, she reclaims the picture, folds her personal perspective again into it and reconciles with the recollections it carries. The feminine determine stays on the heart, now asserting full possession of the sensuality that when drew the doubtless abusive masculine gaze. She remains to be the axis every little thing revolves round.
On the similar time, with this present, Buckman seems to shift her focus extra towards a broader, collective expertise of intergenerational trauma—nonetheless unprocessed and as soon as once more denied the house for reflection and recognition that true therapeutic requires.
“I believe it’s additionally vital to notice that once I began this sequence, there have been works that had been taken off the wall or despatched to an artwork honest after which not exhibited due to the apparently hostile local weather within the artwork world, within the aftermath of the Gaza conflict,” she notes. “These are my Jewish household and I, and these works had been one way or the other censored simply as there was a bit with a bit of gold Star of David. This raises new questions on who’s represented in artwork right now and the way complete communities are nonetheless erased.”
This query of illustration can also be what introduced Buckman to have interaction immediately with artwork historical past in a few of her topics. smells like gentle (2025), for example, was impressed by a portray she noticed on the Henry Taylor retrospective on the Whitney, which had itself been impressed by a piece by Richter and could possibly be linked additional again to Vermeer. “That was his interpretation—his model—of a Richter portray and I beloved how Henry Taylor was appropriating it to discuss his personal neighborhood, about who will get omitted of the canon of artwork historical past,” Buckman notes. Her model reveals a lady in profile, her physique turned away from the viewer, her head wrapped in a putting golden-yellow scarf rendered with delicate folds and highlights that echo the sinuous motion of her gown, coated in dense, vivid crimson floral embroidery that creates tactile depth and very important movement. “I wished to create one thing that appears at a Mizrahi, trendy Orthodox Jewish girl, as a result of I additionally really feel that these are additionally folks and identities which are omitted of the canon of artwork historical past.”
That is additionally why all of the works are made on repurposed textiles utilizing conventional methods; her canvases are mattress sheets and tablecloths which have typically been handed down by way of generations. “All of them already maintain tales, carry recollections; they revive the legacy of different girls for me,” she displays.
Already embedded in these supplies are tales of intergenerational trauma, resilience and resistance. These textiles operate as a website of restore, the place Buckman tries to drag the threads collectively once more—mending reminiscence with out concealing what’s damaged, permitting the chaos and hardship revealed by the falling strands to stay seen. “I get to construct upon the tales that had been already there, those we don’t find out about. Have been these textiles treasured? Have been they discarded? We don’t know,” she says. “We don’t know who the ladies had been who dealt with them. Discarded or cherished, they nonetheless carry one thing ahead.”
The one text-only work within the present underscores the connection between thread and textual content, as these textile items change into vessels for preserving each particular person and collective reminiscence. “& nonetheless girls will inform a lady or what stays of her bones that they’re mendacity,” reads the blue embroidery in crows on the tracks (2025)—a cryptic, poetic allusion not solely to the historic tragedy of the Holocaust but additionally to the continued erasure of home violence, each previous and current. Whereas Buckman has lengthy addressed this denial in her work and public presence, she created this piece throughout a interval of reckoning with how deeply Holocaust denial and the gaslighting of antisemitic expertise proceed. “One of the heartbreaking and disappointing issues I’ve witnessed within the final two years has been seeing girls—feminist girls, extremely educated girls, activist girls—denying the rape and sexual assault that occurred to folks in my neighborhood. Instantly, even now, it will get rejected. Jewish girls are advised they’re making it up.”
Within the threads of Zoë Buckman’s dense emotional storytelling, trauma—each particular person and intergenerational—shouldn’t be erased however held. It’s rematerialized as witnessed emotion and reconfigured into powerfully dramatic pictures that affirm the profound humanity inside every scene. Via the seen labor of stitching itself, the gesture of restore turns into greater than a metaphor—it turns into an important a part of the story.
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