Sheila Furlan's objects, installations and photographs emerge from a conceptual process. As a representative of modern textile art, she creates objects that play with space, time and levels of action. Her speciality lies in the material she uses: the transparent, fragile but robust silk, with which she exploits the spatial, sculptural potential.
The transparent silk offers glimpses into inaccessible interior spaces, creates a dialectical interplay between inside and outside, of space and volume. Using the thread-drawing technique she developed, she embroiders fragments of images and text into the fabric by hand.
Her object boxes, cuboid metal frames covered with silk, have a poetic, seemingly light appearance. Inside, material collages (including natural materials) are sometimes combined with the outer embroidery. As a further option, she developed floating suspensions, illuminated plinths and wall panels as presentation media for her works. The targeted use of light intensifies the transparency of the object and allows further layers of shadows to emerge.
