About Ray and Nia
Ray & Nia are Bangkok-based textile artists working with thread as a medium for image-making.
Through photography, manual digitizing, and machine embroidery, they translate everyday observations of light, place, and memory into tactile stitched works.
Their practice focuses on slow construction, building each piece one stitch at a time.
Practice & process
Each work begins with a photograph taken from their surroundings.
The image is then manually mapped in digitizing software, made some adjustments, where every stitch path is drawn by hand — deciding the direction, density, and layering of thread to shape light and depth.
Rather than using automated embroidery, they treat digitizing as a form of drawing.
The final piece is stitched individually using industrial machines and high-tensile thread, often requiring hundreds of thousands of stitches.
From a distance, the works resemble photographs or paintings.
Up close, they reveal a dense physical surface built entirely from thread.
Ray & Nia’s practice grows from a family background in embroidery manufacturing.
Having spent years around threads, machines, and production floors, they gradually began exploring embroidery beyond its commercial use.
What was once a traditional craft became their language for art.
Today, they continue to use the same tools — not for mass production, but to create slower, more personal works that carry memory and emotion.
They are drawn to quiet subjects — empty streets, changing skies, small objects, passing moments.
Their work is less about documenting places and more about preserving how those places felt.
Through thread, they aim to slow time down and transform fleeting scenes into something tactile and lasting.
- Made slowly in Bangkok. -
