SILK & STONE
Made slowly by Hand, one sewn, one shaped
2 RIVINGTON STREET, NYC, SEPTEMBER 1-7, 2026
Silk & Stone brings together fifteen works, all made by one pair of hands across a decade. The setting is a working loft on Rivington Street — plain walls, long natural light, a room closer to a studio than a gallery, where the work can be seen in the kind of space it was made in. The room will display works involving two materials; Silk & Stone.
Through the week the exhibition presents the original works in silk and stone, an audio-visual record of a single portrait from first stitch to last, and the company of the artist, in residence throughout. An evening private view and drinks reception on Wednesday,September 2 opens the week, with remarks from the artist and an early look at the collection.
Silk&Stone
WORKS ON DISPLAY
Silk & Stone presents 15 works made over a decade, including 10 custom hyper-realistic portraits and objects built stitch by stitch in silk floss, and 5 works in gilded stone and clay. Silk work is made to measure, built stitch by stitch 700-800 hours and upward of 60 shades of silk a piece. Stone pieces are hand moulded, sculpted, and embellished with sheet gold work.
SILK
Silk work, comprising hyper realistic portraits in silk thread — works assembled entirely by hand, stitch by stitch and layer by layer. The monochrome pieces achieve a tonal depth and precision more often associated with painting than embroidery. These are slow objects in a fast world: one-of-a-kind heirloom pieces, made to be passed between generations, much like the craft traditions from which they come.
Others
STONE
Pieces where cement, clay and pigment is mixed, poured, moulded by hand, then set and left to form. As the surface contracts it finds its own weakest line and opens. She does not choose where the break falls —the material does — and that is where the work stops and the gilding begins: sheet gold laid by hand into the fault, following it exactly.
Others
Sadhana Srivastava
The Artist
Sadhana Srivastava is a self-taught embroidery artist. Trained at the Apparel Training and Design Centre in New Delhi and formerly with the Indian couture house Shades of India, Sadhana has since devoted her practice fully to silk thread work since 2015. She works from India, for collectors in India, the UK and the US.
Over the last decade, she has created 10+ custom works - more than 9,000 hours of emboridery in hyperrealistic silk portraits, and mixed media in stone and gold, all by hand. Some of these pieces will be on display.
Silk&Stone is her first solo exhibition in NYC.
2 RIVINGTON STREET, NYC
SEPTEMBER 1-7, 9AM-9PM