Material Thinking and Cultural Space

Neringa Dastoor was a resident member of Textiles Hub London from 2016 to 2018. During her residency she developed an intellectually ambitious practice that brought together textiles, drawing, architecture, moving image and publishing to investigate memory, migration and the ways people construct belonging through material culture. Her thoughtful, research-led approach and instinct for collaboration made her one of the intellectual anchors of the Hub’s community during those years.

Of Lithuanian heritage, Dastoor approaches textiles as one of several visual languages through which diasporic experience, urban space and cultural identity can be explored. Following an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art (2013), she established an interdisciplinary practice that moves fluidly between exhibitions, publications, installations, workshops and curatorial projects. Since graduating she has exhibited work at venues including Tate Modern, the RCA Hockney Gallery and The Horse Hospital, while her short film Metaqua won the BBC Worldwide Creative Challenge in 2015.

Central to Dastoor’s practice is an interest not simply in objects themselves but in the spaces they inhabit. Whether through textiles, drawing, installation or moving image, she investigates how meaning shifts when material is displaced, relocated or viewed within new architectural and cultural contexts. Her work is characterised by a distinctive Baltic sensibility—measured, architectural and conceptually rigorous—where drawing, stitch, mapping and film become tools for understanding place, memory and human connection.

Collaboration sits at the heart of Dastoor’s practice. She has developed projects with organisations including the London Festival of Architecture, Tate, the Centre for Recent Drawing and The Poetry School, where she undertook the experimental Drawing Poetry residency, describing it as “a very healthy and refreshing process… an absolute treat in terms of professional development.” In 2017 she curated Fabric of Architecture as part of the London Festival of Architecture, bringing together artists, architects and researchers—including Emma Neuberg—to explore the relationship between textile thinking and the built environment. She has also developed an increasingly thoughtful curatorial practice, organising exhibitions that foreground process, making and material enquiry. This includes curating Room 1, featuring Richard McVetis, where the slow, visible labour of hand stitch was presented as a quiet counterpoint to the speed of contemporary retail culture.

Alongside her own artistic practice, Dastoor has become an accomplished curator, organiser and educator. She has initiated exhibitions with fellow Textiles Hub London artists, including collaborative projects with Richard McVetis and Archana Pathak, and continues to create opportunities that connect artists across disciplines and cultures. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including recent group exhibitions in Berlin and New York, reflecting an ongoing dialogue with artist-led networks across Europe and the United States. Her contribution to the Kingsgate Workshops Trust 40th Anniversary documentary further demonstrates her continuing commitment to London’s artist communities.

Neringa Dastoor exemplifies Textiles Hub London’s belief that textiles are a place of ideas as much as materials. Her practice demonstrates how cloth, drawing, architecture and language can be brought together to explore questions of migration, public space and cultural memory, while her curatorial initiatives reveal the importance of creating platforms for others alongside developing one’s own work. Through artists such as Dastoor, Textiles Hub London demonstrates that textiles can operate not only as objects of making but as ways of thinking about architecture, language, movement and belonging. Her career reflects the Hub’s commitment to cultivating artists who build ideas, conversations and cultural infrastructures as confidently as they make works themselves.

Further information: https://www.neringadastoor.com