I'm Only Human

I'm Only Human is an ongoing multidisciplinary textile project that began as an exploration of crisis: how we respond in times of uncertainty, and the everyday objects we turn to for warmth, protection, and comfort.

Working with blankets sourced from charity shops, friends, and family, I cut out and constructed life-sized human forms. Many of the blankets arrived carrying their own histories, including those passed down through generations, holding memories of care, loss, and complex family relationships.

The resulting works reflect the fragility and resilience of human existence. Like the blankets from which they are made, we are shaped by memory, relationships, and lived experience. Fragmented yet continually reconstructed, the figures speak of mortality, change, preservation, and renewal, revealing how our identities are continually remade over time.

The title acknowledges our shared vulnerability. Despite our differences, we are all only human—shaped by circumstance, carrying histories, and continually adapting to change.

Participants were invited to lie on large sheets of paper while I traced the outlines of their bodies, creating life-sized templates from which the forms were cut.

This took place during the Merge Residency in Frome in 2025.

As the work evolved, I experimented with different approaches to making and display. Initially presented on the floor, the figures were later suspended within a gallery to create a forest-like environment, inviting visitors to move through the installation and reflect on their own experiences of being human.

In a later iteration, some of the figures were suspended from bicycle wheels.

Their shifting shadows traced and redrawn, extending the work beyond the textile itself.

Elsewhere, I assembled the forms into large and small collages.

And buried one beneath the earth to explore the effects of time and soil on the fabric. The decayed fragments were later painstakingly reconstructed using textile conservation techniques, allowing deterioration and preservation to coexist within the same object.