Ophelia Arc: Sculpting the Psychological Knot

Ophelia Arc’s visceral textile sculptures stitch trauma, memory, and feminist psychoanalysis into haunting forms.

Crochet as Wound: Ophelia Arc’s Flesh-Toned Obsessions

The first impression of Ophelia Arc’s work is not visual but visceral: flesh-toned yarn bulging into forms that look as though they once belonged inside the body.

Ophelia Arc seated between two large crocheted pink and gray textile sculptures laced together with ribbons — **Ophelia Arc** positions herself within her textile sculptures, turning yarn and ribbon into fragile corporeal forms. *Cleaved dyad | Hand dyed yarn, hand dyed ribbon, thread, tulle and book rings | 10 × 30 × 27 inches, 25.4 × 76.2 × 68.6 cm* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Ophelia Arc transforms medical dividers into fragile architectures, layering memory and body onto transparent skin. *Memory house (1–3) | Tattooed plexi on hospital divider* Permission and Courtesy of the artis

Suspended skins, sutured cavities, crocheted umbilical cords, and bruised hues hover between the domestic and the surgical.

Arc’s work is a refusal to let the invisible remain invisible.

They pull you into the knot, her term, borrowed from psychiatrist Domina Petric, for the tangled configuration of emotions, beliefs, and trauma that lies at the center of her practice.

**Ophelia Arc** ruptures satin into wounds, weaving repair and harm into fragile balance. *Harm and repair dependency cycle (intro) | Hand dyed ribbon, hand dyed yarn, latex and thread on double stretcher bars* Images courtesy of the artist

Born in 2001 and based in New York, Arc belongs to a generation of artists for whom theory and autobiography are not opposites but fuel.

With Chilean and Peruvian roots, and degrees from Hunter College (BFA) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA), her practice builds from feminist psychoanalytic and writing (Kristeva, Hustvedt, Winnicott, Chodorow) and her own diaries, photos, and medical documents.

Ophelia Arc textile cocoon sculpture in pink yarn with small toy bear attached, from thesis exhibition — Ophelia Arc suspends memory in a cocooned form, where childhood and trauma intertwine. *arc + (syte, DreaM) | From thesis exhibition at Lyles & King | Materials: hand dyed yarn, thread, tulle and zipper | Dimensions: 30 × 30 × 42 in (variable)* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

These fragments, knotted together, become sculpture, textile, and installation, skin-like surfaces that record both mutilation and mending.

Key Themes

Trauma & memory as material
Feminist psychoanalysis (Kristeva, Winnicott, Sontag)
Wound dwelling (mutilation vs. mending)
Skin as metaphor (protection/vulnerability)
Control, obsession, dissociation

At its heart, Arc’s practice is obsessional. Every element is done by hand: crocheted, stitched, drawn.

Obsession here is not pathology but method, repetition as a way of circling trauma, touch as a way of reasserting presence even in dissociative states.

Ophelia Arc turns crochet into raw wounds, where skin splits open and memory bleeds through. *mAdana (syte, DreaM) | From thesis exhibition | Materials: hand dyed yarn, thread, tulle and zipper | Dimensions: 30 × 30 × 42 in (variable)* *Wo(und)mb study | Hand dyed yarn, thread | 6 × 3 × 12 in* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Her palette is equally embodied: flesh pinks, browns, bruised purples, tones dyed from decomposing flowers, acrylic pigments, even her own blood.

In doing so, she asserts not only control over material but an uncanny fidelity to the body’s fragility.

Ophelia Arc studio with textile wall works, crocheted sculptures, and artist desk — Artist studio: Ophelia Arc surrounded by stitched surfaces and suspended forms, where care and harm intertwine. *Wo(und)mb study | Hand dyed yarn, thread | 6 × 3 × 12 in* *Detail view from Arc’s textile practice | Ribbon, hoop, hand dyed thread | Dimensions variable* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Artist studio: Ophelia Arc surrounded by stitched surfaces and suspended forms, where care and harm intertwine. *Wo(und)mb study | Hand dyed yarn, thread | 6 × 3 × 12 in* *Detail view from Arc’s textile practice | Ribbon, hoop, hand dyed thread | Dimensions variable* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

What strikes most in Arc’s work is the tension between comfort and danger. Crochet, long associated with “women’s work,” becomes a site of disquiet when stretched into bulging tumors or limp skins.

Threads reference maternal bonds and caregiving, but also strangulation, starvation, consumption.

**Ophelia Arc** layers yarn, gauze, and objects into fragile constructions where memory and body converge. *The Natal Lacuna |* **From her exhibition at Lyles & King Gallery** | Hand dyed yarn, dye stained gauze, Alex and Ani sparkle unicorn bangle charm, tattooed doll arm, magnets, thread, and tulle on stretcher | Frame: 20 × 16 ½ × 4 in / 50.8 × 41.9 × 10.2 cm | Overall: 42 × 29 × 6 in / 129 × 73.7 × 15.2 cm Permission and Courtesy of the artist and gallery

Her objects oscillate between care and malice, melancholia and mania, as if they were constantly on the verge of collapsing or reforming.

Notable Series / Visual Motifs

Crocheted umbilical cords and flesh-toned skins
Suspended cavity-like forms with medical sutures
Diary fragments and personal documents stitched into textile
Bruised, decomposing, blood-infused dyes

The result is a sculptural language that feels simultaneously tender and threatening.

Ophelia Arc studio materials showing balls of hand-dyed yarn in pink, brown, and flesh-like tones — **Ophelia Arc** treats yarn as flesh — bruised pinks and earthy browns become the raw matter of memory and trauma. *Studio material | Hand-dyed yarn in various tones* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Ophelia Arc wall installation of crocheted textile fragments in flesh tones resembling organs and skins — **Ophelia Arc** builds an archive of flesh-toned fragments, each obsessive stitch mapping trauma as texture. *Wo(und)mb study (detail) | Hand-dyed yarn, crochet samples, fragments | Dimensions variable* *Process view | Spools of yarn on wooden rack, hand-dyed in pink and beige tones* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Ophelia Arc yarn rack with spools of pink and beige yarn prepared for crochet sculpture — **Ophelia Arc** builds an archive of flesh-toned fragments, each obsessive stitch mapping trauma as texture. *Wo(und)mb study (detail) | Hand-dyed yarn, crochet samples, fragments | Dimensions variable* *Process view | Spools of yarn on wooden rack, hand-dyed in pink and beige tones* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Ophelia Arc wall display of crocheted textile sculptures in flesh colors resembling skin and organic forms — Ophelia Arc’s crocheted wall forms unfold as soft, flesh-toned structures that blur between comfort and unease. *Hand-dyed yarn, crochet forms | Dimensions variable* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Placed within the contemporary field, Arc converses with predecessors like Eva Hesse or Faith Wilding, artists who also treated fiber as a carrier of corporeal memory, while adding a distinctly psychoanalytic and autobiographical charge.

Where Hesse’s latex bulges pushed against minimalism’s cool logic, Arc’s stitches narrate personal knots of trauma and recovery.

**Ophelia Arc** suspends bodies in net-like traps, weaving tenderness and entrapment into haunting forms. *Totality trap |* **From exhibition The Natal Lacuna, Lyles & King Gallery** *| Hand dyed yarn, thread, tulle, tattooed doll arm, chain, welded hoop | 30 × 17 × 17 in / 76.2 × 43.2 × 43.2 cm (height variable)* Permission and Courtesy of the artist and gallery

Where Wilding’s feminist craft elevated crochet to a collective ritual, Arc bends it toward the solitary, even obsessive, register of wound dwelling.

Yet Arc’s work resists the neat closure of healing.

These are not memorials to past suffering, but ongoing negotiations. Skins remain open, wounds visibly stitched but never sealed.

The work insists that trauma cannot be wrapped up, only lived with.

Ophelia Arc opens satin grids into fragile wounds, where surfaces collapse between care and rupture. *Harm and repair study I | Latex, hand dyed ribbon, gauze, and thread on stretcher | 16 × 20 in* Permission and Courtesy of the artist

Viewers encountering her suspended, cavity-like sculptures are invited not into catharsis but into recognition, a shared unease, a mirroring of their own hidden scars.

In this way, Arc takes the fragile materials of thread and memory and makes them monumental. Her work is a refusal to let the invisible remain invisible.

Each crocheted form is a marker of survival, each suture a record of agency reclaimed.