At this year's FOCUS Art Fair London at the Saatchi Gallery, Abi Dionisio's mini-exhibition When Threads Take Turns stands out immediately. Her paintings are trompe l'œil works that look like embroidered fabric at first glance—you have to do a double take to realize you're looking at paint on canvas. It's a clever trick, but it's also the key to understanding what she's actually doing.
Dionisio pairs small, detailed embroideries with large-scale paintings that reproduce the reverse side of the stitched work. From the back of an embroidery, you see thread knots, loose ends, and the structural work that holds the image together. That's what she paints. The gesture is simple but profound: she's showing us that meaning exists on both sides. The finished, polished surface tells only half the story. The hidden side—the labor, the time, the technique—is equally real and equally important.
This approach runs through her entire practice. Every stitch is a mark of time spent. The work demands patience and precision, and that effort becomes part of the meaning. Embroidery itself carries weight here. Historically relegated to the domestic sphere and coded as "feminine," it's been reclaimed in contemporary art as a serious medium for storytelling and resistance. For Dionisio, it's personal too. She grew up in her parents' tailoring shop, surrounded by fabric, thread, and the rhythms of handwork. Material and memory are woven together in her practice.
One striking piece, Between Instincts, shows a young woman with closed eyes, caught between thought and sensation. Around her, animals look outward with alert, knowing gazes. The painting explores the tension between intellect and instinct, between what we think and what we feel beneath the surface.
Identity and belonging run through her larger body of work, particularly as they relate to Filipino women. She uses painting, embroidery, and mixed media to explore family roles, expectations, and personal agency. Faces, homes, the sea, and ships recur as motifs—images that suggest journeys and displacement.
In an earlier series called Backbone & Stitches, she honored her father, a tailor. His tools and clothing became symbols of compassion, persistence, and respect. These paintings depict the strength and fragility of family bonds—love expressed through thread and paint.
What makes When Threads Take Turns compelling is that it works on two levels. Technically, it's impressive. But more importantly, it has emotional intelligence. Dionisio asks us to look deeper, to value what's hidden as much as what's visible. The work reminds us that real depth comes from all the invisible labor underneath.
FOCUS Art Fair London 2025 runs at Saatchi Gallery from 17th -19th October.