NeDaj Embroidery
Artist
Jaden Galvan
Artist Bio
Jaden is a chicana textile artist from Los Angeles, California currently attending the School of Gallatin at NYU. Her concentration includes Indigenous studies, sustainable fashion, and creative healing. At the early age of six, her nana from Mexico and grandmother from Lebanon embedded their eloquent techniques of knitting, stitching, and embroidery into her. From then on, these beautiful crafts became her therapy. Jaden's interdisciplinary art today reflects on ancestral knowledge, connection with spirituality, and identity. By utilizing traditional and contemporary mediums, their main focus is to create a narrative of familial history in relation to cultural inheritance and present-day afflictions.
Artist Statement
With not a pitch to hear but the rhythm of my jammed spindle. I was astonished at the idea that my own bare hands can create something so beautiful out of nothing. Despite the fact that this skill strayed me from my boredom, this spiritual act went beyond the art of textile work. My emotions were fabricated within creations similar to cloth being bound by thread. While entering adulthood, aspects of my lineage became more prominent as I studied the various mechanisms my Yaqui ancestors practiced during times of suffrage. With this knowledge, my creativity became a vehicle to heal past and present trauma. I found myself sealing my soul up with nothing more than a nanogram of thread. The fact that my sense of peace perched within my needles led me to question the love for this craft as I began to reflect on the roots of my passion. Did the stabbing of this fabric represent more than just the enjoyment for creating or did it embody generations of suppressed trauma? Keeping this in mind, I intend for each piece of work to carry a story that aids in the assistance of weaving up emotional wounds. Through acts of creative decolonization, I hope to preserve and revitalize heritage by utilizing ancestral practices as a means for liberation.
