In a white-walled gallery in the heart of Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood, thread does more than sew fabric—it stitches memory, language, and art as a form of care.
That’s the premise behind “Laura Marsh and Inés Raiteri: Labyrinth of Thread” at Dot Fiftyone Gallery featuring the distinct yet deeply intertwined textile works of Binghamton, N.Y.,-born, Miami-based Laura Marsh and Argentina’s Inés Raiteri. Though shaped by different geographies and generations, both artists converge around embroidery as a collective act, fabric as symbolic language, and art as a form of care.
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Curated by Saul Ostrow, a critic, editor, and curator currently based in New York City, three large-scale textile pieces demand attention. Two are collaborative—one initiated by Marsh and finished by Raiteri, and one in the opposite direction. The third, a communal canvas, was started in Argentina and found new life in Miami Springs, where Marsh leads weekly embroidery sessions with older adults.
“When Alfredo Guzmán (director of Dot Fiftyone Gallery) brought me the pieces from Inés’s studio—one nearly finished, one blank, and a communal canvas—I felt I had to respond through making,” says Marsh. “I dove into the community textile, which became the heart of the show and is still open to new interventions. For months, I stitched it with students at the Miami Springs Adult Center. Every week they’d add an image, a memory, a symbol from their lives.”
That workshop, says Marsh, “wasn’t just a teaching space—it became a circle of listening, affection, and intergenerational exchange.” One participant embroidered a bird that had started appearing in her backyard after her niece passed away. Another participant, named Luceli, added a small bird before she died. “I wrote a poem in her honor,” says Marsh, adding that “she was a survivor of domestic violence, gifted in watercolor and embroidery. Her presence is still there. Every thread is a memory. Every stitch, a story told by hand.”
For Ostrow, it was this intersection of materiality, intimacy, and pedagogy that inspired the exhibition’s conceptual core. “The show has a dual focus,” he explains. “First, it examines evolving practices that challenge the traditional boundaries between craft and art. Second—and this inspired the title—it delves into the conceptual foundations of each artist’s work, emphasizing how their ideas could only be fully realized through their chosen mediums. The labyrinth becomes a metaphor for the intricate, deliberate paths both artists navigate.”
Raiteri, who studied at Guillermo Kuitka’s Programa de Talleres para las Artes Visuales (Workshop Program for the Visual Arts), in Buenos Aires, has long explored embroidery’s communal dimension. “Art happens with others,” she says. “From the beginning, Laura and I were able to step into each other’s work so quickly, despite not knowing one another. We both understand collectivity as a creative act.”
Her contribution includes a canvas embroidered in workshops she held in Argentina using bedsheets that belonged to her grandmother. “The fabric preserves touch like repeated caresses,” she says. “Embroidery is a kind of text—sometimes hidden, but always speaking. It activates memory.”
Raiteri also embroidered semamoris, amulets inspired by Japanese traditions in which mothers sew protective symbols into their children’s clothing. “They’re like portable charms,” she explains. “I paired them with wallpaper patterns evoking natural landscapes. Speaking about architecture is, in a way, speaking about how we inhabit space.”
For Marsh, who has degrees from Yale University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, embroidery is a critical language rooted in autobiography, protest, and care. “One of my pieces in the show is a large blue band embroidered with the Indian shisha technique,” she says. “Mirrors symbolize self-reflection and protection. I come from a difficult family background, and this is my way of saying: I don’t agree with cruelty. Let’s be kind to each other.”
Her artistic influences include Jenny Holzer, Sheila Hicks, and Jessica Stockholder, as well as Alfredo Jaar. “His vision of America as plural—North and South together—has always resonated,” she says. “That perspective shaped how I approached this collaboration.”
Ostrow notes that their practices, while distinct, share an “indexical” impulse. “Laura emerges from a sculpture and fine arts background while engaging with themes of identity,” he says. “Inés is rooted in craft but conceptually invested in community. Interestingly, their seemingly antithetical approaches found common ground in teaching, which became a key point of overlap and exchange.”
[Click to read the essay by curator and art critic Saul Ostrow]
This educational dimension—Marsh’s Miami-based sewing circles and Raiteri’s decades working in early education—infuses the exhibition with an ethics of transmission. “Community workshops are everything,” says Marsh says. “Twice a week, I lead sessions with elders. We explore stitches—split stitch, French knots, feather stitch—and what those gestures mean. It’s meditative, tactile, and empowering.”
One standout work is a color wheel of embroidery stitches, created collaboratively with her students. “It helps them see thread as a painting medium,” according to Marsh. “Embroidery can blend colors, layer meaning, and offer presence.”
As curator, Ostrow underscores how both artists reclaim embroidery as a conceptual and political tool. “They transmute embroidery from a passive craft into an active critical practice—both personal and collective,” he says. “The needle and thread become a line of inquiry, and the fabric a palimpsest of texts whose layers refuse resolution.”
Textiles, historically dismissed as decorative or domestic, take on new meaning here. “Viewers sometimes expect something soft, minor, domestic,” according to Marsh. “But here, thread is charged with symbolic force and layered with personal and collective histories.”
For Ostrow, this transformation is emblematic of textile art’s current status. “Today, textile art occupies an insurgent—almost subversive—position. It plays an active role in shaping discourses of materiality, labor, decolonization, and traditional hierarchies. It’s a site of productive tension that reflects broader shifts in contemporary culture.”
Despite the physical distance, both artists developed a meaningful dialogue. “We communicated in English and some Spanish—enough to understand each other,” recalls Marsh. “We both wished we spoke the other’s language better, but the willingness was there. That says a lot about the nature of coexistence. Collaborating this way felt human, compassionate.”
Raiteri says they joined forces in whatever way they could.
“Her community understood what it means to create together—respecting each other’s space, stitching from within. This show confirmed something I deeply believe,” says Raiteri. “Beauty can be built together. And I love that I still get surprised.”
WHAT: “Laura Marsh and Inés Raiteri: Labyrinth of Thread”
WHERE: Dot Fiftyone Gallery, 7275 NE 4th Ave., Miami
WHEN: noon to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday; 2 to 6 p.m., Saturday. Through Saturday, Aug. 30.
COST: Free
INFO: (305) 573-9994 or dotfiftyone.com
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