Roots & Routes

Roots & Routes is a collection of paintings and sculptural textile works that explores ideas of origin, belonging, transformation, and the ways in which identity evolves as it moves through different places, cultures, and experiences. Developed during Melody Hesaraky’s residency at Arts Itoya in Japan, the collection culminated in an exhibition at the gallery in August 2026, offering a contemplative reflection on the enduring connections between place, memory, and the experience of belonging.

The works challenge conventional perspectives through mismatched visual elements that, despite their apparent contrasts, come together to create harmonious compositions. Alongside the paintings, flexible textile forms continuously shift in shape and interpretation, reflecting the fluidity of the artist’s own diverse background.

Beginning as a single thread, the textile works gradually develop into masses of interconnected forms. Their ambiguity allows them to be read in multiple ways: as fragments of an animal, a head, a mask, or an entirely new imagined body. The thread becomes structure, structure becomes form, and form becomes a vessel.

The artist extends this exploration beyond the studio by wearing one of the sculptural forms as a mask while moving through Takeo in Japan. In this act, the artwork becomes both object and presence, inhabiting public space and inviting questions about visibility, identity, adaptation, and belonging.

Through painting and textile, Roots & Routes considers how origins remain embedded within us while continually changing through time, movement and experience. The collection proposes identity not as something fixed, but as something flexible. Capable of taking new forms, connecting seemingly distant elements, and creating harmony through difference.