Ruth Jeyaveeran was born in Lusaka, Zambia, raised in the Midwest, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing from her experience as part of the South Asian diaspora, she uses textiles to examine a shared history of alienation and dissociation. In her felted soft sculptures and installations, the boundaries between human, animal, and flora dissolve to tell a story of isolation, migration, and evolution. Familiar shapes evoke our collective memory of early vessels, tools, ornaments, and bones—objects that were once buried and forgotten, now rediscovered through the ritual of felting. 

Jeyaveeran’s debut solo show, Soft Remains, was exhibited at Field Projects (NY, NY) in 2023. Other notable exhibitions include Felt Experience at the Brattleboro Museum, Communion, a solo installation at Main Window Dumbo, and Tree Hugger, a site-responsive sculpture created for Upstate Art Weekend. Her work has been featured at Smack Mellon, ABC No Rio, Westbeth Gallery, The Yard, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, The Border Project, and Bronx Art Space, among others.

Jeyaveeran has been awarded residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Ucross Foundation, Studios of Key West, Residency Unlimited, Lighthouse Works, Marble House Project, Jentel Foundation, Willapa Bay, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, La Napoule Art Foundation, and PADA Studios. She has taught courses in textiles and fibers at Parsons School of Design and frequently leads workshops on felting and the therapeutic benefits of craft. Jeyaveeran is an Associate Professor of Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

IG: @r_jeyaveeran