Alice Thembi (b. 1993) is a textile and mixed-media artist working primarily with silk organza and hand embroidery. Her practice approaches textile as a sculptural material, shaped through acts of construction, erosion, and repair.
Her process begins with the deliberate distressing of the fabric; puncturing, unraveling, and weakening it until holes form and imagery begins to surface. Hand embroidery follows as a reparative act, stabilising and responding to the damaged material. Through this cyclical process of damage and repair, the textile becomes a palimpsest, carrying traces of rupture, reinforcement, and accumulated time.
Thembi’s early training took place within fashion. While studying at Parsons School of Design in New York, she began to understand fashion as a container rather than a destination, becoming increasingly interested in surface over silhouette, in what could exist on the body rather than what the body should perform. She later trained in Haute Couture embroidery at École Lesage in Paris, deepening her technical grounding in French embroidery traditions. Embroidery offered a language where slowness, deviation, and irregularity were not errors but methods.
Silk organza drew her for its fragility and translucence. Distressing a material associated with luxury and perfection felt instinctive. Through processes of damage and repair, abstract figures, floral suggestions, and lace-like structures began to emerge. In her work, lace functions not as decoration but as architecture, a system of absence that holds itself together.
For several years, she produced wearable works entirely by hand. During this period and continuing into her current practice, Thembi has worked closely with her studio collaborator Nwabisa Ntsendwana, through an exchange of methods rather than a division of labour. Thembi shared her approach to distressing and repairing fabric alongside the disciplined techniques she learned through French embroidery traditions, while the collaboration reflects a belief in making as cumulative; shaped through teaching, trust, and shared time.
Over time, the body has receded from the centre of the work, leaving behind its imprint. Thembi’s practice has since shifted toward autonomous textile and mixed-media pieces, where labour, construction, and endurance remain central.