Bradford Textile artist and visual storyteller, Naseem Darbey, uses a sewing machine to create 3D artwork representing or responding to a particular theme, situation, human experience, or fable. She works directly from a model using machine stitch, instead of drawing, to create 2D images, which are then built into 3D narrative sculptures. More detail of Naseem’s creative process can be found at AxisWeb
Image: Naseem Darbey – see artist’s website below
Naseem gained a degree in Fine Art, with honours in 2001, then a MA in Printmaking in 2005 from Bradford College.
In 2009 she worked as an artist in residence with schools exploring the notion of Britishness, and in the same year as an artist at Cliffe Castle, Keighley, to facilitate workshops on drawing techniques and to create work marking the 200th bicentenary and work of Charles Darwin. Her textile art work, ‘Common Star’, inspired by Cliffe Castle’s natural history collection, is on display (at 2016) in the natural history gallery of the museum (see image below).
Naseem returned to Cliffe Castle during 2010/11 as an artist in residence to produce work inspired by the life of the socialite Mary Louise Roosevelt Burke Butterfield, the wife of the industrialist, Henry Butterfield, who owned and lived at Cliffe Castle in the 19th century. Naseem’s work resulted in the ‘Between the Lines’ exhibition at Cliffe Castle and later at the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, County Durham.
Image: Naseem Darbey – see artist’s website below
Naseem has also worked as a freelance illustrator for Bradford Council and worked as an artist at the Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent during 2012-13. In 2013 her work featured in the ‘Growing: Celebrating our past, exploring our future’ exhibition at the The National Centre for craft and Design, Sleaford, and in 2013 she also collaborated on a film with Studio 163, a production company based in West Yorkshire. The film was commissioned as one of seven digital shorts to be shown on the BBC Big Screen in Bradford’s Centenary Square showing an animated sequence of Naseem’s stitch coming to life on the page.
In 2014, and onward, Naseem, with the support of an Arts Council Award, and drawing on the resources of The Gordon Museum of Pathology, King’s College London, has been exploring the experiences of women, divided by centuries, of breast cancer and mascetomy, and using her textile sculptures to present their stories and experiences.
Her work is in private and public collections, including with Bradford Metropolitan District Council, the Artimus Collection, and Calderdale Museums and Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at Cartwright Hall, the Bankfield Museum, Halifax, South Square Gallery, Thornton, and the Brass Gallery in Leeds.
A BBC interview with Naseem in 2014 can be found at BBC
Naseem Darbey’s website is at http://www.naseemdarbey.com/