Rachel Yuen – portfolio

Contact the artist

07985 711180
rpmyuen[at]gmail[dot]com

Exhibition information

Rachel’s focus is the embodied experience and invisible work of motherhood. Mixing rich hand stitching with improvised machine sewing, Rachel tells a story simultaneously unique and achingly universal.  Using and reusing fabric is central to her work. The smallest scrap of fabric can become the focus of an entire piece, a pair of dungarees may be sewn into a quilt, a vintage pillowcase will become a wall hanging. She uses these techniques to make quilts, framed patchworks, wall hangings, brooches and more.

Making art in parallel and collaboration with mothering is integral to her work. Her children are frequent collaborators, their sweet presence felt in the accessibility of the methods used, and the content of her quilts. Their handprints appear often in her work, capturing a moment in time and growing with each subsequent artwork.

Artist information

Rachel Yuen is an Eynsham-based quiltmaker and textile artist specialising in hand work and improvised patchwork. She explores themes such as: the invisible work of women, waste, expectations, & nature.

She graduated from Imperial College London with a degree in Biology before studying to become a midwife at Oxford Brookes University and subsequently gaining an MSc in Midwifery and Women’s Health at University of Central Lancashire. As a midwife she worked in a number of settings, both as an educator and ‘in the thick of it.’ After becoming a mother Rachel focused on providing breastfeeding support before pulling back from midwifery in order to focus on the work of mothering. The transition from the work of supporting mothers to becoming one led to a seismic shift in her understanding of what mothers do and how it is valued. The invisibility of the work of mothering was a deeply uncomfortable revelation.

Beginning to knit when visiting her grandmother in hospital, Rachel has found solace in textile arts for many years, but it was in quiltmaking that she found her artistic voice.

Rachel’s textile art practice coexists with her mothering and her children are frequent collaborators. Her quilting uses diverse and often labor-intensive methods to capture moments in time along her journey as a mother. She uses cyanotype, photographic transfer techniques, the handprints of her children and simple running stitch blocks to capture unique moments that hold the echos of universal experiences of parenting and childhood.

She has exhibited at the Festival of Quilts and can be found on Instagram @rachelissowing