Yoko Daihara

Yoko Daihara is a textile artist who creates mesmerising woollen tableaux. Using a weaving technique called tufting, Daihara will stretch a piece of canvas onto a large wooden frame and pierce yarn through this material using a tufting gun. Like a painter initially drafting sketches onto canvas, Daihara will outline the various forms and gestures that populate her woollen works. Returning to these silhouettes, Daihara will add different colours and textures to the initial outline. Merging abstract patterns with recognisable shapes, each work hosts a dizzying array of references. In the large scale work It doesn’t get it (2022), geological, anatomical and astrological elements collide, with limbs, planets and rock formations meeting in the composition. Witnessed en masse, each piece seems to offer a different puzzling narrative, like different chapters within an ongoing story. The bold colours and geometric patterns within Daihara’s textiles echo the pioneering work of Anni Albers. The ongoing experimentation with wool also calls to mind the work of artists such as Magdalene Abakanowicz or Sheila Hicks. Although Daihara undoubtedly builds upon this lineage of textile artists, her interest in storytelling carves a unique space for these bewitching rugs to evolve.