Becca Birtles
Bristol, UK
Becca is a Deaf textile artist whose work draws on her experience of deafness and lipreading, exploring how hearing loss and background noise affect the perception of sound and communication. Using fabric, thread and a mix of machine and hand embroidery, she makes textured works that echo the distortion and complexity of hearing loss. The works also give form to the words, assumptions and unspoken meanings that shape encounters between Deaf and hearing people.
By layering materials and playing with what can and can't be read, Becca invites viewers to notice what is understood, overlooked or left unsaid. Her work opens out from personal experience to wider questions of identity, access and empathy between Deaf and hearing worlds.
Photographs: By the artist