Margarita Ghazaryan: Embroidery as a Tool for Rethinking Women's Histories

Margarita Ghazaryan is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is centered on embroidery and textile art. Through traditional techniques, she investigates social structures, stereotypes, collective memory, and women's experiences. Working at the intersection of research and material practice, Ghazaryan transforms embroidery from a domestic craft into a critical artistic language.

Could you tell us about your artistic practice and the themes you explore?

— I am Margarita Ghazaryan, an interdisciplinary artist. My main medium is embroidery, although I also work with textiles more broadly. Through art, I try to express the issues that concern me. My practice is based on researching these questions and exploring them through visual form.

Through embroidery and textile art, I try to uncover different layers of these problems, to deconstruct existing structures and, in a sense, challenge stereotypes. The concept is extremely important to me. I want my works to give viewers food for thought.

Could you tell us a bit about your artistic journey and how you arrived at the practice you work with today?

By profession, I am a journalist and an art historian. For many years, my career in journalism focused on investigating social, public, and other complex issues, specializing in investigative reporting, fact-checking, and data journalism. Parallel to this, I was writing art criticism and producing journalistic projects about traditional crafts and contemporary art, while also deeply immersing myself in embroidery and mastering its various techniques.

About ten years ago, I hit a conceptual turning point. I realized that while journalism, art criticism, and craft each offered powerful modes of expression, neither was sufficient on its own to exhaustively address the complexities of the world around me. Presenting events purely as cold journalistic facts or structural analyses felt limiting, just as practicing embroidery solely as a decorative, traditional craft did.

It was exactly here that the language of contemporary art became my natural resolution. As an interdisciplinary artist, my practice serves as a synthesis of these backgrounds. I utilize the rigorous research methodology of a journalist, the critical eye of an art historian, and the tactile weight of embroidery to dissect complex human and social narratives.

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What themes or emotional states feel most important in your work at the moment?

At the moment, my practice is centered around memory, historiography, symbols and their changing meanings, social stereotypes, and women’s rights. Through my art, I seek to investigate the social issues and structural pressures that I have personally encountered or witnessed. My goal is to deconstruct, question, and scrutinize traditional structures and top-down, dictated ideologies. I am deeply interested in patriarchal narratives and the overlooked, silenced histories of women and marginalized groups.

Though it may seem paradoxical, I deconstruct and analyze these deeply entrenched traditional structures using the exact mediums and objects traditionally tied to them. For instance, I address women's rights through embroidery and items conventionally categorized as "feminine," such as a household kitchen sieve. By employing these techniques and materials, the medium ceases to be a tool of domestic conformity and instead becomes an instrument for its own exposure, deconstruction, and transformation.

Emotionally, my work navigates a state of focused, quiet resistance. It is the tension between the slow, meticulous process of embroidery and the urgency of its socio-political themes.

How does a new work usually begin for you: through an idea, an image, a material, or an emotion?

For me, the concept and the material undergo a parallel process of development and refinement in my mind. Since my primary mediums are threads, textiles, and household sieves, I do not need to constantly search for new materials; instead, I focus on which specific properties or forms of these materials can best serve my concept. I constantly ask myself: should I use photoluminescent threads that reveal text only in the dark, or wool and traditional carpet weaving etc? What kind of sieve will best hold the narrative? The underlying idea and the purpose of the piece are paramount to me—I need to ensure that the work is never just a visual exercise, but is conceptually justified.

Emotion acts as a constant background layer. To put it in perspective, in journalism, you might investigate or report on issues that do not necessarily move you on a personal level. But in creating art, I believe you must have a profound emotional attachment to the idea, the concept, and the material. It requires that deep emotional integration to transform raw research into a piece of art and to effectively communicate that resonance to others.

How important is the exhibition space or context in the way your work is experienced?

As a contemporary artist, purely visual aesthetics or flat, two-dimensional planes are never enough; they are not the primary focus of my work. A significant portion of my practice consists of installations, a medium that inherently demands an active dialogue with the physical space—the isolated object alone is insufficient.

Many of my pieces literally cannot function without specific environmental conditions. For instance, when I address hidden psychological layers or suppressed emotional states, I often use photoluminescent threads. Without the intentional manipulation of light and total darkness, the work loses its conceptual core and is reduced to a mere object. In another project, for instance, the physical artwork is deeply integrated with the shadows it casts onto its surroundings. Without the proper spatial lighting to project these shadows, a multi-layered installation could mistakenly be perceived as just three embroidered sieves.

Therefore, space is an active collaborator in my work. Furthermore, the institutional or physical context of where a piece is shown—whether within a traditional gallery or outside of it—carries its own historical and social weight, which can either amplify the artwork’s layers or strip them away.

What projects or ideas are you currently working on, and what would you like to explore further in the future?

Currently, my research and practice are becoming increasingly focused on dismantling patriarchal structures and reclaiming women's rights through interdisciplinary textile art. Specifically, I am investigating the history of ideological crafts and traditional portrait textiles, which have historically operated under strict patriarchal norms—where men were prominently celebrated, while the grueling physical labor of the anonymous women who wove these pieces remained entirely in the shadows.

In my upcoming work, I am exploring how to shift this historical hierarchy by using domestic objects as tools of critique rather than conformity. I am focusing on themes of erasure, examining what gets preserved in collective memory and what is systematically sifted out.

In the future, I aim to expand the scope of my research, using the textile medium and spatial environments to question and re-examine established narratives and social structures.