This project continues my exploration of memory through adornment, extending it onto an alternative surface by working directly on unstretched fabric. Because much of this body of work centers on wearable objects, I was drawn to creating a garment-like form rather than a traditional canvas. I turned to the tallis, a Jewish prayer shawl traditionally worn beginning at a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, as a symbol of identity, transition, and spiritual belonging.

I was interested in exploring absence as a form of presence, the shape a garment creates when it holds the memory of a body without containing one. In Jewish prayer practice, the four tasseled corners of the tallis, the tzitzit, are gathered to symbolically bring together the Jewish people from all corners of the world in a shared prayer for peace. My own memories of the tallis are deeply physical and emotional. I remember sitting beside my father in synagogue and tucking myself under his tallis, associating the garment with warmth, closeness, and protection.

To translate that feeling, I painted the exterior of this tallis-like form with the visual language of insulated outerwear, referencing the puffed structure of a winter jacket. The interior is illuminated to suggest a soft internal glow, allowing the object to radiate warmth rather than simply depict it. The piece is shaped around a mannequin, preserving the bodily form the garment implies and clarifying how it is meant to be worn, while still emphasizing the absent figure.

Details such as the colored collar panel and the attached tzitzit anchor the work in the recognizable structure of a tallis. Together, these elements position the garment not just as an object, but as a vessel for memory and feeling. The work treats adornment as something that holds emotional residue, where warmth, ritual, and identity remain present even when the body is not.