Grany and the Red Shirts, Ann Silverman, 2020, paper, 24 x 15 in. / 60.96 x 38.1 cm.

Handmade Testimonies: The Art of Ann Silverman

June 12, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: Grany and the Red Shirts, Ann Silverman, 2020, paper, 24 x 15 in. / 60.96 x 38.1 cm.

Ann Silverman’s textile and handmade paper works confront the tangled legacies of labor, race, and grief with raw materiality and meditative precision.

Ann Silverman creates handmade paper and textile-based works exploring history, labor, and injustice through raw materials and tactile storytelling.

Her practice reclaims the physical textures of cotton, thread, and pulp to create pieces that act as vessels for collective memory and protest. Each work in this trio anchors personal reflection within broader histories, inviting viewers to engage with the tactile echoes of injustice, survival, and healing.

Explore our curated selection of contemporary artists from around the globe.

Naturalist Gallery offers artist representation internationally. Apply your art.

Trying to Breathe, Ann Silverman, 2024, handmade paper, 16 x 12 in. / 40.64 x 30.48 cm.

In Trying to Breathe, a crimson sheet of handmade paper becomes a somber reliquary. Cracked surfaces, torn openings, and a visceral topography of ruptures evoke the impossibility of breath, a direct response to the death of George Floyd. Silverman's manipulation of the medium while wet, then allowing it to harden into this wounded form, turns the paper itself into a body bearing trauma. The title insists on remembrance, while the texture serves as a scarred record of suffocation and systemic violence.

Red Cotton, Ann Silverman, 2021, paper thread and raw cotton, 20 x 16 in. / 50.8 x 40.64 cm.

Red Cotton weaves together fiber, thread, and symbol. A small cotton sack formed from tight and loose weave bands holds tension in every stitch, the tension between the commodity and the human lives that cultivated it. The use of intense red thread invokes the cost: blood, sweat, and stolen labor. Its vertical format references domestic scale while embedding brutal economic realities. It is both artifact and indictment.

Cotton Seeds, Ann Silverman, 2022, handmade paper, fabric and thread, 44 x 28 in. / 111.76 x 71.12 cm.

Cotton Seeds expands the scope, presenting a large, wall-hung work in red paper embedded with the seeds of cotton itself. Thread outlines a grid, nodding to containment and structure, while irregular pulp textures hint at uncontainable histories. A small black square at the lower edge contains a paper bowl with a single cotton ball, a humble yet charged offering. This quiet gesture becomes monumental in context, a seed of history cradled within the complex weave of memory.

Together, these works form a red-hued archive of historical weight and personal witness. Silverman does not romanticize the past, she renders it palpable. Through thread, pulp, and gesture, she stitches a tactile memorial to resilience and reckoning.

Learn more About Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art.