Trimmings
By Nicole Beno
Trimmings is an artist project by Nicole Beno, presented as a series of images and .gifs that gather together scanned textiles, photography, collage, and digital drawings. Additionally, the artist created a limited edition of prints for sale as part of The Walldog launch (April 18, 2026) at Whoopsie Daisy Drinks.
Looking through the windows of my downtown Kitchener art studio, I see the same ‘FOR LEASE’ signs that I’ve seen for years in the condominium building that sits across from me. And while walking with my daughter, I’ve been noticing liminal spaces, places of passage rather than destination, caught in the midst of transformation. In the 2024 absurdist comedy-drama, Universal Language, director Matthew Rankin constructs a deliberately hybrid world in which Canadian and Iranian cultures co-exist in the same physical and linguistic space of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Rather than presenting multiculturalism as a contrast between separate communities, the film visually fuses them, a feature especially noticeable in signage, architecture, and dialect, making hybridity a default of the setting. For example, Farsi appears on storefronts, government offices, and school signage on what are recognizably everyday spaces—strip malls, bus stops, bureaucratic offices, even Tim Hortons restaurants.
As a way of playing alongside these liminal spaces, Trimmings is a new body of work that places together trim from the hems and selvedges of Slovak costumes and textiles with the trim of decorative elements and details on building facades. The word ‘trim’ has many interesting metaphors and connotations, where details are nestled into a larger context. But trim, too, is a verb for removing excess: excess decoration, excess clutter, or the excess fat from a piece of meat. I’m interested in playing with the double meaning of this word while working against the way in which modernism favours the removal of flourishes and decoration.
The curtains, doilies, and other home linens found in Slovakian homes often depict motifs from folklore. Deemed “fancy,” they’re often stored in closets and remain unused, passed down as family heirlooms across generations. My family has many of these unused textiles that I’ve scanned and digitized for Trimmings. This friction mirrors my own “in-between” identities, navigating the complexities of visual language rooted in my ongoing interest in ornamental traditions across Slovak folklore.
Nicole Beno (@nicole_beno) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the Slovak diaspora through the lens of personal narrative, creating vibrant imagery across collage, murals, illustration, and design.