Fields of Thread: Carmen Mardonez’s Chromatic Solace
Embroidery has long been bound up with expectations placed on women: hushed labour, domestic usefulness, patient decoration. For Chilean-born textile artist Carmen Mardonez, those expectations became the starting point for something altogether more expansive. Her solo exhibition Chromatic Solace, presented by Hannah Payne Art at TM Gallery in London (19 March – 5 June 2026), arrives in the wake of International Women’s Day and offers a vivid reminder of how textile practice can hold space for both resistance and care within its threads.
Carmen Mardonez, Texildermy III, 2023. Hand embroidered thread on discarded bedsheet.
Now based in Oxford, Mardonez works across large-scale embroidery, sculptural textiles and installation. Her path to art has been shaped by an unusually interdisciplinary background. She studied history and later completed a master’s degree in community psychology in Chile, working for years in social policy and advocacy before returning to creative practice. Migration also played a role. Moving from Santiago to Los Angeles with a newborn child prompted an urgent period of making, during which embroidery evolved into the visual language through which she explored autonomy, motherhood and belonging.
Carmen Mardonez, Texildermy XII, 2025. Hand embroidered thread on discarded bedsheet.
At the centre of Chromatic Solace is a monumental new textile installation stretching over five metres in width. It is the largest work Mardonez has produced to date, developed after a residency and grant from Philadelphia’s Mosaic Museum. The piece will travel to the institution in 2027, but its presentation at TM Gallery marks the first opportunity to encounter the work in situ.
Running through the exhibition is Mardonez’s understanding of making as a place of refuge — a practice rooted in feelings of safety, happiness and emotional grounding. For the artist, colour becomes a form of solace: a space that feels protective and intimate, akin to home. Her works operate almost like a security blanket, holding warmth, memory and care while creating a connection between maker, material and viewer.
Hand embroidered thread on discarded bedsheet.
Mardonez builds her compositions freehand, layering thousands upon thousands of stitches until thread begins to behave like paint. Dense accumulations of colour create fields that swell and recede across the textile surface, giving the work a sculptural, almost atmospheric presence. The palette — vivid pinks, purples and acid greens — draws on the saturated light of Los Angeles sunsets and neon city nights, while the fluid movement of the Northern Lights informs the rhythmic flow of the stitched forms.
Carmen Mardonez, Texildermy VII, 2025. Hand embroidered thread on discarded bedsheet.
Material carries equal weight in the work. Rather than pristine cloth, Mardonez favours discarded domestic textiles: worn bed sheets, clothing and household fabrics donated by friends, neighbours and members of her community. Each surface arrives already marked by use; through the slow process of stitching, those traces become embedded within new visual landscapes.
Alongside the new installation, the exhibition includes works from Mardonez’s ongoing Textildermy series and a sculptural wall-hung textile piece. Together they create an immersive environment that invites close, bodily engagement, balancing monumental scale with tenderness and tactility. Colour and texture draw the viewer nearer; the works surround the body, offering both comfort and a quietly insistent form of freedom stitched into cloth.
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Further Information:
Carmen Mardonez: Chromatic Solace is on show at the TM Gallery in Kings Cross, London, and presented by Hannah Payne Art from 19 March to 5 June 2026
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Image Credits:
Lead: Carmen Mardonez, Chromatic Solace, 2026. Hand embroidered thread on discarded bedsheet. 3 metres h x 6 metres w.
All further images as credited in captions and copyright of the artist.