Mia Foulds
Threadbare
9 April – 17 May 2025
Constantly and unknowingly we leave ourselves behind and leave our frayed edges to
constantly unwind.
Unwind unwind unwind again,
undo, untie, unfurl, misplace.
Misspell what’s left, what’s done, what’s fake, illegible it stays as we fray and fray.
Threadbare centers the motif of the bed as a site of abjection. Hosting a poetic practice that describes elements sitting on the fringe of the abject; cast-offs, dust and small debris from personal and public spaces of living and working. The gathered cast-offs take with them the remnants of human connection and movement through the space of their collection. Joining the accumulation of past recorded life also resting upon our skin. I’ve made my bed, do you care to lie in it.
Not quite a visceral disgust, hovering between subject and object. The act of noticing, crucial. They are the skin cells caught under our nails, the unrecognised hair attached to the hem of trousers and the sweat residue our palms constantly deposit. Disgust grown through volume, the orchestrated cast-off’s fall and rest on murmurings of their natural habitats. Omnipresent, although only registering slight distaste when worn on our skin, adorned on our clothes and tangled within our sheets. Stemming from the bed, the most comfortable space, constantly disturbed and constantly relocated.
The collected cast-offs live within a collection box, occasionally borrowed to form the poetry adorning the walls and floor, then once again returned to the collection box. Holding with them the trace of the latest space installed and the memory of the text’s formation. The text leaks from readability, slightly illegible it is overlaid, removed and left to be noticed.
To consume, to devour, to stuff and to gulp.
layers peeled back and poked.
A soft beneath we let pour out and overflow,
down our pant legs and soaking our socks
holes in the fabric as pores to absorb,
Wary of staining and satin touch.
Images by Ardit Hoxha