BIOGRAPHY

In the labor of reconstructing a memory Lilah Yektai marries textiles and painting by weaving canvases, embroidering through the surface, and painting on jacquard weaves. She has an appreciation of the qualities these mediums share, including reflection, sensitivity, and tenderness. Her work focuses on the intersection of painting and textiles and how to push painting towards textiles and textiles towards painting.

The theme of intimacy repeats throughout Yektai’s work, whether in portraits of her girlfriend or still lifes of dried flowers. By slightly abstracting explicit scenes, she creates a deeply intimate space where the relationship lives. The subtlety of weaving a twill canvas, the softness of threads embroidered through skin, and the expression of impasto strokes layered on top evoke passion and lust. How can one capture a kiss? Embroidered, woven, or written love letters on the canvas reveal moments from her long-distance relationship. Through paint, she abstracts or enhances these words where chosen. Some remain legible, while others are hidden, keeping certain moments private, for the love to be just theirs, intimate.

This reverie is prevalent in the work, as she paints someone she longs for, she recalls memories or creates completely new fantasies with her strokes. The time it takes to weave a canvas allows Yektai to revel in thoughts, and the expressionist painting process allows her to act on them. The day dream becomes an almost reality when she picks up the paintbrush, the scene becomes fabricated in her studio, real. There is a repetitiveness to weaving that the brush strokes interrupt.

Lilah Yektai is a New York-based painter currently pursuing a BFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design. Growing up surrounded by globs of oil paint, she draws inspiration from her grandfather, Manoucher Yektai, and father, Darius Yektai, both painters. Her textiles background feeds into her hunger for thick paint by being the bed the paint lays on. In the end, Yektai’s paintings themselves become love letters to painting itself.