WITH NEEDLE AND TREAD: ANXIETY AS EMBRODERY

Young people visualise a taboo — now the work comes together

How can embroidery become a shared language for young people to talk about anxiety?

This question has been explored by a 10th-grade class from Aarhus Efterskole in a co-creation project with Science Museerne for the exhibition The Overlooked Body at Steno Museum.

When anxiety becomes a shared embroidery

The students’ individual embroideries are now complete. Each student has translated their own interpretation of anxiety into stitches, colours and textile forms.

The next step is to bring all the individual contributions together into one collective artwork.

The project is based on the idea that the slow, repetitive process of embroidery requires presence and patience — and that working with soft materials can have a calming effect on stress and anxiety.

Embroidery thus becomes an alternative language — creating space for a topic that is often difficult to put into words.

From individual stitches to a collective narrative

The artists are now entering the next phase: curating, composing and assembling the many textile fragments into one unified installation.

Each individual expression will be preserved — while also becoming part of a larger whole.

The aim is not to present a single, fixed image of anxiety, but to reveal its complexity and diversity.

“By bringing together all these different perspectives, we hope to highlight the complexity of anxiety and the many dimensions within it — including everything we still don’t know,” the artists explain about the upcoming work.

A sensory and collective exploration of anxiety

When the exhibition opens on 18 June 2026, visitors will encounter an artwork that brings together individual experiences and a shared story — stitch by stitch — into a sensory and embodied exploration of anxiety.