I met Andrea in San Diego last year and was immediately floored by her work. (Also, being 1/4 Romanian but still knowing almost nothing about Romania, I’m always fascinated by Romanian artists.)
From afar, the stitching and calming colors looked like the work of a doting grandmother, but up close there were images of vaginas, fetuses and a study of the myths that mothers told their daughters in Transylvania, Romania, where Ms. Dezsö, 39, was raised…
Working in the city has provided fodder for many of her ideas and for her embroidery series, which she stitched while traveling throughout the city. A woman stitching in public is viewed differently in different neighborhoods, Ms. Dezsö found.
“If I’m in Queens, people think I’m a traditional woman,” Ms. Dezsö said. “If I’m in Manhattan, it’s the hippest thing.”
The use of cross-stitching as a technique offers an exceptional sculptural effect that intensifies the dramatization of the image and heightens the conceptual meaning of the objects. In a sense, one could say, she pushes the distorted image and its history towards the viewer.