When We Still Believed

In When We Still Believed, Ruth Jeyaveeran draws from her experience as part of the South Asian diaspora to examine our shared history to confront feelings of alienation and dissociation. In her felted soft sculptures and fiber-based installations, the boundary between human, animal, and flora dissolve to tell a story of isolation, migration, and evolution. Familiar shapes evoke our collective memory of early vessels, tools, and bones – objects once buried and forgotten, now restored through the ritual of felting. Each piece functions as an intimate excavation as the fibers shift and resettle creating unexpected marks that rise to the surface.

The act of sewing, tying, and tangling fibers together, is an attempt to repair ruptured bonds between body, environment, and community. Wool is primal, spiritual, and bound to nature. Textiles, a source of warmth and shelter, offer a tactile antidote to our disenchantment with the modern world. Jeyaveeran collaborates with the material and the process allowing long-forgotten truths to emerge.

Born in Lusaka, Zambia, and raised in the Midwest, Ruth Jeyaveeran lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her solo show, Soft Remains, was exhibited at Field Projects in 2023. She has also exhibited at various venues in and around New York such as the Brattleboro Museum, Main Window Dumbo, the Queens Botanical Garden, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, and The Border Project Space. Jeyaveeran has been awarded residencies at Lighthouse Works, Marble House Project, Jentel Foundation, Willapa Bay, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and PADA Studios. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Instagram: @r_jeyaveeran