Dharma Taylor is a multidisciplinary designer and maker with a background specialising in menswear and textiles. She graduated from Rochester University for the creative arts with a BA in Fashion Design and the London College of Fashion with an MA in Menswear. She has developed her practice and explored working with new material, Dharma’s way of combining textiles with woodwork produces works of great beauty and deceptive simplicity.
Over the past few years through research-based projects, she has sought to observe aspects of the society and systems in which we exist. Inspired by diverse sources, from technology and poetry to ancient civilisations and cultural plurality.
As an artist of dual heritage, she draws on her Caribbean and European lineage, creating work that allows her to explore her position within the Diaspora and contemporary British society. This perspective has long been the impetus behind her narrative-rich, design-driven, art methodology for making new work.
Since graduating she has worked on various artistic projects; they’ve been shown by a variety of national and international organisations and galleries including the Benaki Museum in Athens, the V&A and Tate Britain. She is currently a Lecturer in Fashion and Textiles at Central Saint Martins and splits her time between teaching and developing her practice. In an exciting development from her use of textiles, Dharma has approached working with wood in an organic way expressed through careful observation and respect of the natural material, paired with traditional carpentry techniques. The woodwork pieces are crafted in memory of her great-grandfather tapping into the carpentry world that he had a passion for.