Reina de la vida - Queen of Life

Collaborative Embroidered Specimen Artwork

A study in transformation, decay and the strange beauty of the natural world.

Created in collaboration with embroidery artist Sen, this one-of-a-kind artwork began with a piece of black velvet, transformed by intricate hand embroidery into an elaborate botanical web of twisting forms, delicate motifs and organic patterns.

The embroidered textile was then returned to Obscure, where it became the foundation for a three-dimensional specimen composition. Bird, snake and shark bones, butterflies and a small mouse skull have been carefully arranged across the embroidered landscape, creating a strange meeting point between the decorative and the macabre.

At its centre, the mouse skull becomes almost a relic, surrounded by butterflies and bones, while the embroidered forms radiate outward like roots, branches or an unfamiliar living organism.

Framed within an ornate vintage-style frame, the finished piece has the character of something discovered in an old natural history collection: part Victorian curiosity, part botanical relic, part memento mori.

This is not simply an arrangement of specimens. It is a collaborative artwork built through two very different forms of making — the slow, meticulous language of embroidery and Obscure's fascination with bone, decay and the remnants of life.

One of a kind. Created in collaboration with @shetheconcept, go check her beautiful work out on Instagram and Yaga. 

The Details That Matter

• 300mm by 190mm
  
• In ornate vintage frame under domed glass