Myah Hasbany

I'm a 23 year old designer originally from Dallas, Texas now living in London. My work is an exploration of my feelings about my body, especially processing gender dysphoria. I get a bit annoyed when people say, you just make big stuff. To me, it’s a practice of taking up space. People have torn me down about how much space my body takes up in the world, so now I'm able to take ownership of exactly how much space I take up. I can explore how I see my form away from myself, I can create another “body” of sorts. And in that world, being too big or too much is never a problem.

My work has two major elements, the first being experimental knitwear. As a nonbinary person, I use this medium as a way to work through feelings of gender dysphoria. These take the form of fine art sculptures, but I've also found ways to scale them down into wearable accessories. To me, they represent softness as courage. These pieces are always crochet or knit by hand, which is an important part of my practice. The other element is handcrafted textiles, which are made into one of one pieces. These pieces tend to take on a darker mood, but perform a necessary role against the more humorous, sweet knitwear. For me, it's a balance that’s representative of my own outlook on the world. It’s the tension between vulnerability and strength that’s formed from painful memories. Bianca Blanari wrote a really beautiful review of my graduate collection that summed it up perfectly, “ Myah's silhouettes swell like memory, distorted, fantastical, protective. To me, they speak of displacement, of identity stretched and reshaped, of softness as resistance. There is humor. There is sorrow. There is silence. And above all, there is courage.”