Desire Moheb-Zandi only started weaving a few years ago, but she’s been hooked on textiles since the moment she first set her hands on a loom. The Berlin-born, Brooklyn-based artist, who was raised in Turkey by her mother and grandmother, has always been surrounded by this type of handiwork—her grandmother knit everyday items like washcloths for Desire and her mother when Desire was growing up. “The idea of making a cloth is so traditional, but with the materials, it became more about experimentation and material research,” she says. “I’m kind of rough with the loom,” she says, explaining that a professional weaver would never put the materials she does through the age-old process. Moheb-Zandi crafts tapestries that combine unconventional, upcycled fabrics like rubber or shiny plastic vinyl with more loom-appropriate materials like natural wool.
Moheb-Zandi’s tapestries have been included in various feminist group shows in New York, including the upcoming Indira Cesarine–curated exhibition at Untitled Space titled “One Year of Resistance.” Her work is also on display at Diane von Furstenberg’s Soho storefront. In conjunction with New York Textile Month, Moheb-Zandi crafted two original tapestries for the brand’s DVF Studios campaign (which hang alongside a third one that she had already created). Moheb-Zandi has incorporated some of the brand’s iconic prints into these new works. She was particularly drawn to DVF’s Elsden print due to its half hand-drawn, half digitally manipulated composition. “I went to their fabric store, which is in Midtown, with their patternmakers and ateliers, and I picked a few fabrics, some sequins, some more different things, and then I manipulated them. I wrapped some around a sponge that I wove into the loom.”
Moheb-Zandi’s colorful, highly textured pieces, which will be up in Diane von Furstenberg’s Soho store until the end of the year, are a perfect encapsulation of her experimental approach to a traditionally feminine medium. “The things that I weave are almost like violence against the loom. I’m kind of rough with it. Sometimes I’m very poetic and I like to do more details and sometimes it’s just a raw piece sticking in there.” Catch Moheb-Zandi’s wonderfully raw yet refined works of art at DVF while you still can.
