In 2017 I visited Pripyat, the ghost town closest to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Over the past thirty years, nature that was destroyed by human hubris and incompetence has grown up to dominate the abandoned man-made structures. I began to embroider photographs and make sculptures of plants overtaking people and buildings of the city I was living in, adding images to this series with each new city my art has taken me to. Although presented in a whimsical fashion, using an intimate scale and a “feminine” craft technique like embroidery, on closer examination the implications of these pieces become more sinister. As plants grow uncontrollably through the buildings and streets, people are either absent or oblivious to the situation. Viewers are left to wonder about this change in dynamic, what preceded it, and what will prevent it. The resulting works exist in an ambiguous space: a shift in the dynamic has clearly occurred, but nature has fought back and new life has grown from it. I have recently expanded this series by collaging and embroidering into traditional linens found in flea markets and thrift stores. These linens evoke domesticity, yet there is a dissonance between that and the apocalyptic imagery depicted on the textiles.

Heather Beardsley is an American visual artist that works with various media, using the aesthetics of science to play with semiotics and visual hierarchies. She received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, after earning a BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia in 2009. After graduating, she spent the 2015-2016 academic year in Vienna, Austria on a Fulbright Scholarship for Installation Art. In 2016 she was awarded the Braunschweig Projects twelve month International Artist Scholarship in Braunschweig, Germany. She has been awarded residencies at bartr, in Budapest, Hungary, KulturKontakt in Vienna, Austria, the Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing, China and Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, Nevada. Recent group exhibitions include Off the Wall at the Spartanburg Art Museum, New Waves 2019 at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and the 8th Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, at the Museo del Traje in Madrid.