With Witness, Providence-based artist Sasha de Koninck considers the natural histories of worn garments, investigating the intimate, often invisible traces of the bodies and environments that shape them. Approaching clothing as a form of memory technology, the works in Witness foreground fabric as a shared second skin, absorbing sweat, stains, wear, and time; holding experiences long after any individual body moves on.

de Koninck’s hand-done beadwork traces and monumentalizes marks typically understood as failures—spills, bodily fluids, discoloration—and transforms them through slow, deliberate labor into raised, luminous surfaces. Stain becomes embellishment; erasure gives way to preservation. Presented in relation to one another, the works evoke absent bodies while insisting on their continued presence through material memory. The works call to mind both Mary Kelly’s exploration of domestic labor, and a lighter touch you might expect to find, say, in the sketchbooks of a young Rei Kawakubo. de Koninck deftly balances investigation and playfulness to create works that are both resolute andcelebratory.

By situating textiles as a foundational technology, Witness challenges ideals of cleanliness and control, proposing instead that stains—evidence of living—are traces to be carried, seen, and cared for.

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Sasha de Koninck is a visual artist, designer, and educator. While studying textiles in undergrad, she was introduced to the field of electronic textiles and wearable technology. She went straight to graduate school after completing her BFA, in order to further continue the expansion of her research. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Intermedia Art, Writing, and Performance at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she worked with Laura Devendorf and the Unstable Design Lab. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University in Boston, where she works with Laura Forlano in the Critical Futures Lab.

https://studiosdk.net