Ruth Thomas

us/concept

UNSCREAMED SCREAMS

Present Pattern of Past Nightmares

As a child, I had a recurrent nightmare in which the personification of evil appeared in form of ‘The Thief’. All these dreams followed the same pattern:

I am in a crowd, happy and carefree, but suddenly I know ‘The Thief’ is there. I know he (it is always a man) is coming for me. I try to run, but can hardly move. I want to scream, but no sound comes. He gets closer and closer, and when he is about to catch me, I wake up.

For years, I had these dreams, in which I could neither run nor scream. So here, on a pillowcase from my childhood, I have embroidered that scream that would never come out of my mouth in those nightmares: HILFE! (HELP!)

The cries for help form a pattern of unscreamed screams, just as the nightmares always followed a fixed pattern.

(Cotton thread embroidered on one of my childhood pillowcases, 30 x 30 cm, 2025)

This work was realised as a contribution to Gaelle Chassery and Sofie Dieu's Dream and Stitch Project gathering stitched dreams from all over the world in order to create a worldwide dream map. The size of the individual embroideries was fixed at 30 x 30 cm.

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