Tender Women — Sahra Hersi Studio

Women's Museum

Tender Women

2025

Tender Women, Women's Museum, 2025. Photography by Julia Forman.

♥ Client: Women's Museum
♥ Collaboration: Adanna Group
♥ Year: 2025
♥ Location: Sheffield

Developed alongside the Adanna Women’s Support Group, Tender Women is a collaborative project exploring how craft, care, and lived experience intersect. It was created as part of Desire Lines for the inaugural exhibition season at the Women’s Museum in Barking. The showcase brings together work by workshop participants alongside a new piece by Sahra Hersi.

Across five creative sessions, participants explored indigo dyeing, cyanotype, cross-stitch, collage, and poetry. These traditional mediums are often sidelined as simple domestic craft, but here the group used them as dynamic tools for reflection. The slow, transformative nature of the materials (like indigo darkening through oxidation or cyanotypes coming to life in the sun) mirrored ongoing conversations about resilience, self-expression, and finding your own path.

That idea of forging your own way, inspired by the concept of desire lines, runs through the entire project. The exhibition title itself was created collectively during a group poetry session.

A huge thank you to the women of the Adanna group and The Women's Museum for sharing their stories, art, and time so generously.

A participant working with Desire Lines, a drawing activity designed by Claire Mason, during a Tender Women workshop at The Women's Museum, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.

Tender Women printed leaflets designed by Sahra Hersi and Claire Mason, featuring cross-stitch typography reflecting the workshop process. v, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.

View through the site-responsive installation by Sahra Hersi, with indigo-dyed panels and ceiling drapes, Tender Women, Women's Museum, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.

Tender Women printed leaflets designed by Sahra Hersi and Claire Mason, featuring cross-stitch typography reflecting the workshop process. Women's Museum, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.ndigo-dyed napkins with personal manifestos by participants of the Adanna Women's Support Group, alongside Poem by Tender Women, an orange-dyed cloth bearing a collective poem. Tender Women, The Women's Museum, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.

Sahra Hersi speaking at the opening of Tender Women, in front of Poem by Tender Women. Women's Museum, 2025. Photo by Julia Forman.

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