Iván Acebo-Choy

Dear friends,

Welcome to the very first message from my studio! As you may know, I work slowly, and I’ve come to value that rhythm. Each book I make is entirely hand-embroidered, and given a lot of thought from the initial drawings to the final binding structure. Every line, every form, every decision happens one stitch at a time. The process is meticulous, quiet, and deeply absorbing—so much so that this message arrives after seven months of focused, deliberate work.

I’m incredibly happy to share the results: six embroidered books, each with its own format, scale, and mood. They explore different themes, but all reflect my ongoing interest in drawing, emotional narrative, abstraction, and the tactile nature of reading. All six books are available! If you're interested in any of them, feel free to write to me directly at [email protected]

Thank you for following along,

Iván

Becoming Landscape

12 hand-embroidered panels and bound in accordion format, 2 original polaroids, screenprinted texts, 37.2cm x 14cm, 2025

Edition of 2; only one available

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This hand-embroidered artist’s book explores cruising not as a fleeting act, but as a slow, embodied way of knowing and transforming space. Through thread and texture, the work dissolves the boundaries between body and landscape—rendering both as anonymous, porous shapes open to tactile exploration. Each stitch traces a moment of encounter, of presence without identity, where the contours of desire blur into terrain. The pages unfold like a map of gestures: fragmentary, intimate, and mutable.

Included polaroids, taken at the actual cruising grounds that inspired the embroidery, offer quiet evidence of place—ghostly, fragmentary images that anchor the work in real geographies of longing.

Untitled 01 & 02

10 hand-embroidered panels bound in accordion format, hammered brass plate, 16.5cm x 20.5 cm x 1.3cm, 2025.

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Untitled is an ongoing series of hand-embroidered artist’s books, each presented as a unique volume. Bound in accordion format and carefully constructed by hand, these books reject conventional textuality and embrace drawing—specifically, stitched line—as the sole carrier of meaning. Every page is embroidered, forming sequences that echo the visual rhythm of a graphic novel, yet refuse to settle into any fixed narrative. There is no correct entry point, no hierarchy of reading. The hammered brass plate that serves as the only title is a paradox: a declaration of “Untitled,” engraved with force and finality. It signals both presence and refusal. Each volume becomes an intimate field of tension between precision and ambiguity, labor and silence, fragment and continuity.

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Annotated Short Stories

The Annotations: 15 hand-embroideries on black wool, hand-bound, 13cm x 20cm

The Stories: 20 hand-embroideries on beige wool, hand-bound, 26cm x 22.5cm

The Companion: 30 hand-embroidered portraits on beige wool, 48cm x 29cm

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Annotated Short Stories is a unique artist’s book composed of three interconnected pieces that explore narrative, interruption, and visual multiplicity through embroidery and drawing. The first piece, The Stories, presents three distinct storylines in a sequence of hand-drawn and hand-embroidered images, arranged in a format that recalls the visual pacing of a graphic novel.

Some images in The Stories contain subtle notations—calls to footnotes—that lead to the second piece: The Annotations. These are not textual explanations but rather additional hand-embroidered drawings that expand, contradict, or quietly destabilize the primary narrative. In this way, annotation becomes a space of nuance, where the visual commentary challenges linearity and authorial control. The third piece, The Companion, a bidimensional linen work composed of embroidered faces, functions as a final layer—an emotional and symbolic constellation of expressions that extend the annotations into a more abstract, collective voice. Together, the three parts form a fragmented yet intimate cartography of storytelling, where meaning emerges not through closure, but through accumulation, tension, and touch.

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How to Improve the World by Standing Still

20 hand-embroidered panels, hand-embroidered book jacket, hand-bound, 11.5cm x 14cm, 2025

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How to Improve the World by Standing Still unfolds as a quiet, emotional journey. Told entirely through a sequence of stitched drawings, the book follows a central character whose path is less about movement through space and more about internal transformation. There are no words—only the visual language of line, gesture, and thread. The stillness implied in the title becomes both a method and a metaphor: the story suggests that slowing down, observing, and feeling deeply might be acts of resistance, or even healing.

For me, books like this offer a space of joy and freedom. They allow for the possibility of emotional representation without the constraints of linear narrative or textual explanation. I am especially drawn to the opportunity to explore the male figure—tender, introspective, and vulnerable—outside traditional frameworks of masculinity.

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Failure of the Imagination

16 hand-embroidered panels, hand-bound, 20cm x 12cm, 2025

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Failure of the Imagination is composed of a series of vignettes, each one suspended between legibility and abstraction. The reading of the book is intentionally unstable; images surface and recede as thread and color form composite gestures—suggestions of a face, a body, an action, or perhaps a direction toward understanding the whole. These vignettes do not yield a single narrative. Instead, they invite the viewer into an open structure, where meaning is glimpsed through fragments, pauses, and accumulations.

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Finally, I’m also thrilled to announce that I’ll be participating in CODEX 2026 in San Francisco this coming February, where I’ll be showing all of these books together for the first time. If you’ll be around, come say hello and see them in person—alongside the mind-blowing work of so many incredible book artists from around the world.

Thank you for reading!