i thought about killing a man: Exhibition Interview w/ Gurleen Rai

NOTE: These interviews have been edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted and edited by Antenna Communications Coordinator FreeQuency, photos by Jaelyn “Yaya” Hill. “i thought about killing a man” is on view at Antenna:3718 from January-February 2026.

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FreeQuency: What are you trying to communicate with this exhibition “i thought about killing a man”? How did the title, the pieces you chose to display, as well as how you displayed them aid in that communication? 

Gurleen: It’s first of all my reverence for nature. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a very rural, all white community with cows as neighbors. My mother kept chickens and honeybees and being in nature and around animals was more comforting for me than being around people. I didn’t feel safe around people, but I would go outside and feel “Okay, now I can be free. Now I can be myself”. By creating things that are directly inspired by nature honors nature and is my way of showing that care. Bringing in the branches and presenting things in a more natural way, that’s very true to who I am and that’s true to how a lot of these materials were found. I forage for the plant material – I’m going around at 3 in the morning, and picking flowers – I’m that weirdo. Everything you’re seeing is natural fibers, natural dye, eco printing and a majority of these fabrics were sourced from rick rack and other thrift stores or I purchased them and they are vintage. 

I need my work to be environmentally conscious. I don’t like to use the word ‘sustainable’ – it’s a very vague term that’s been overused. Inherently making anything is not sustainable. 

The second part is the number of hours that go into the work. Every piece represents dozens of hours. Hand stitching & embroidery are very labor intensive, and when I think of labor intensive work, I think of the energy that goes into it. I think of my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great great grandmother who used to do Phulkari, which translates to “flower work”. It’s embroidery on top of homespun cotton, and they use silk thread to create ornate patterns on the fabric. 

I had this thought that I didn’t know much about my grandmother and my great grandmother. I come from a very patriarchal society where women’s lives were very, very private. There’s no written account of what their lives were like, what their stories were, where they came from, or their thoughts on getting married and having kids…but they made these embroideries, and to me that’s where their stories are. 

They spent hours creating these embroideries. Think of all the energy that goes into that – all the thoughts that you have while you’re creating something – that is essentially an act of devotion. There were probably times they were enraged, they were pissed off, and yet, you would see them, and you’re like, ‘You’re embroidering a flower. You’re embroidering a leaf’. Meanwhile, she’s fuming. That’s where the title of this exhibition came from – ‘i thought about killing a man, but I made this instead. you can see it on the tag of the clothing (it was shortened for the show to “i thought about killing a man”). It’s like – in place of doing something that is violent, I chose to make this dress, something that appears very demure, but the energy that went into this was not demure, it was not soft. I’m creating a textile. I’m creating a fabric. And – I am furious. 

FreeQuency: I love the brick in the bag. I think that’s just… spot on. Please tell me a little bit about the weapons and accessories on display in the exhibition – those are, I think, part of what makes this, an art exhibition versus just a display of clothing. Why did you decide to include some of those other elements in it?

Gurleen: When I first made these bags, Frank [from H.I.M Studios which has a concurrent fashion based exhibition running downstairs called “A Problem of State”] was swinging it and said, 

‘You can use this as a weapon.’ 

I was like, ‘Stop! you’re gonna break it.’

But he was serious and said, ‘it feels like it could be used for self defense.’

Gabriella made the machetes and the knives – she contributed such a significant portion of this exhibition. I’ve gotten more excited about the knives than anything because of this idea of making things from scratch. She was in her backyard, sparks flying, shaping the edge of the knives and the machetes – it felt so appropriate for the theme. 

That has been a big part of the exhibition – women coming together and channeling their emotions. In Gabriella’s case, it’s like, ‘i thought about killing a man, but I made a machete’. 

FreeQuency: how did you get into clothing making and fashion design? 

Gurleen: I’ve always been the type of person where, for instance, since I was a kid and learned how to hold a pencil, I’ve been drawing every single day, I’ve been painting, I’ve been cutting things up. One time, I was making a doll and I cut my own bangs off, because I was like, “[the doll] needs hair”. My parents came home, and they were horrified, all they saw was little spikes sticking out of my forehead [laughter]. 

When I was in high school, I was supposed to be doing math homework, and instead, I was beading a necklace at the kitchen table. My father came up and was like, ‘Why don’t you just do fashion design?’ and a light bulb went off. I was like, ‘well, why don’t I? Good suggestion. Very nice suggestion. Thanks, Dad.’ 

Before that, I’d always been into thrifting…before it was considered cool…if you’re old enough, you remember as teenagers back then, thrifting was like, ‘you’re wearing used clothing’! 

I’ve always been outside looking under rocks, under the leaves of trees to see what grows there. Fashion design was really just a next step, but I never really cared so much about fashion. It was more like, ‘what do I want to say?’. 

I went to fashion school and it was more of a technical school where they really wanted us to learn how to do proper sewing techniques, pattern drafting etc. from an industry standpoint as opposed to just creating for creation’s sake. I wasn’t able to be as creative as I wanted, but the positive was I actually got the foundational skills I needed to be able to execute just about anything I could imagine. 

I really enjoy the technical aspect of it and how multifaceted it is, whereas with animation, you feel like a mole person. You’re drawing, you’re scanning, and you’re sitting in front of a screen for 10 hours a day to end up with 30 seconds of animation. With fashion design, it feels refreshing to be able to look for interesting fabrics, then design and cut them out, then create clothing that’s well made with care – that’s really important to me. 

FreeQuency: With all of that context in mind, how did you choose the pieces you wanted to display and how they’re displayed? What’s the difference, for instance, between this very clear nature scene in one room and this “ghost in the shell”-esque part of the exhibition in the other room? 

Gurleen: To me, each room almost represents a different aspect of being a woman. Here we have Earth, because she was buried alive, and here we have water, and here we are underneath the canopy of the forest – it was very intuitive and I’m still deciphering it. I think sometimes when we create, we don’t always know why we create the things we create. It just comes out and then later on, down the line, we connect the dots of understanding ‘why was that so meaningful to me?’ 

One of the things I put on all my work is ants. If you look closely, I draw ants onto everything. There’s hundreds of ants on these clothes. I also depict rabbits a lot. The ants make sense to me – the rabbits still don’t make sense to me, but I’m just going with it. I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna just keep doing it, and at some point, it’ll make sense. I’m gonna trust that at some point, I’ll decipher it, but right now, I don’t, but I’m gonna go with it. 

That room [with the mechanical wires and dress] I called “The Burial Dress”. This idea was she was buried alive and then all the creatures, the animals, and the roots wound around her and made a home out of her. Then, when she crawled out of the earth, all those things came with her. The idea and story behind it was that throughout history women have been buried alive, they’ve been drowned, they’ve been burned, but the stories don’t die. This specific dress felt very impactful to me and I had Gabriella do the sound installation. 

FreeQuency: What do the ants represent?

Gurleen: The ants represent invisible labor. Ants are everywhere doing work at all times. They pollinate flowers, they pollinate plants – they’re the reason we have fruits and vegetables. They clear out dead material, dead matter, they’re community oriented, they work together, [yes] you have the queen ant, but it’s really mostly indecipherable ants that do the work.There’s something really beautiful about that idea of ‘just do the work and if we all come together and we do our part, we’re gonna see the result of that’ 

It’s not about one person saying ‘I did this’ and this exhibition really wasn’t  that either. Riley made the film, Gabriella did the sound installation, Eliza and I worked on the textile that’s hanging from the ceiling. Everyone came together to participate and make it happen. It was a very collaborative and beautiful experience, and it’s a reminder of what’s possible if people work together.

FreeQuency: What brought you back to fashion with Zim + Teemo? 

Gurleen: When I met Frank Robinson (of H.I.M. Studios, the exhibition showing concurrently downstairs at Antenna:3718), I invited him to my house. I live in a shotgun, so there’s no closets built in and I had a rack of clothing out. I’d told him before that I make things, but I don’t think he fully believed me, so when he saw the rack, he said, ‘you made every item on this rack?…And you don’t do anything with this? Like, you’re just… just… making clothes… He was learning to sew (he’s self taught), so he was approaching it from the place of ‘you have this knowledge. I’m here making things wrong, and you just know how to do it!’. And I thought, ‘I guess he is right.’

It started with the tire bags. Frank started making belts out of tires, and I had the idea that I could turn one into a bag. I braided it into a bag, so it didn’t start as much with the clothing as it did with making an accessory – I had a good accessory, and then I started introducing clothes. This exhibition was my chance to be more creative, and not have to necessarily think about how sellable it is. I still want clothes to feel like they could be put on a person – I think that’s hard for me to shake that feeling that I want it to be structurally sound and itneeds to be well made and well fitted. It was a chance for me to do that other creative part that I had not been able to do. This was a beautiful moment for me to work backwards – usually designers create conceptual, runway pieces, then, based off of them, they make the “ready to wear” versions. I didn’t do that. I went straight to “I think people could wear this here in New Orleans”. I was thinking about the climate here, and I love coats and I loved making outerwear, but I can’t do that here. So I started with things I knew would probably work here. 

Another part of it, to be honest, was survival. There isn’t enough money in animation. You’re perpetually pitching to different networks, to say, ‘can you give me funding?’ or you’re applying to grants to get funding. I can show an animation, but unless I put it on YouTube behind a paywall, it’s really tough [to make income]. 

Making clothing was my way of being able to make money. I started with more wearable things, thinking, ‘what will people wear that is in alignment with my ethos of upcycling, working with vintage materials, and will allow me to stay true to that? What can I make that I know people will want? ‘Cause I really need to make money.’ It was a very rude re-entrace, but this exhibition was fun. 

FreeQuency: what do you hope people will take away after experiencing this exhibition? 

Gurleen: One of the things I hope is that people realize the things around them are very beautiful and special. What I mean by that is – the flowers you see in this exhibition are beautiful, and they’re from the neighborhood. I work with ferns, I work with weeds, I go to local thrift shops…we often romanticize things that are foreign and far away, but in our daily lives, we are surrounded by so much magic and beauty – even the ants! I really want people to start reimagining the world around them. 

Another takeaway is for people to realize the fashion industry is broken, but there is a way to create things that are beautiful and thoughtful, and also environmentally conscious. I hope people feel inspired to want to make things for themselves. 

FreeQuency: When you say the fashion industry is broken, can you just talk a little bit more about that, and then how that relates to your design ethos? 

Gurleen: It’s broken because it’s entirely unsustainable. You can’t be producing plastic clothing at the volume of what’s being produced – it’s hard for me to even imagine what that looks like. The volume of what’s being produced, the rate of consumption, the desire for constant newness –  it’s like a pit. Even at the luxury level, it’s luxury fast fashion. 

My whole ethos is to purchase something that you want to keep. I often talk to people who are like, ‘I saw photos of my mom, and she’s wearing this amazing jacket and I want that jacket.’ There was a time where people wore beautiful clothing that could be handed down and mended and it felt like you’re receiving something special. I think about the clothing that we’re buying now, and I’m like, ‘who would want to hand this to somebody?’ Nobody’s gonna want to be like ‘here’s my precious SHEIN sweater, I want you to have it!’ Nobody! 

Nothing is precious, things don’t feel…there’s no memory in them because people don’t wear something enough for them to have memory. Right now I’m wearing this sweater my grandmother knit. I always wear these kinds of sweaters, but the idea that my grandmother’s hands made it means there’s a feeling associated with it. With everything I make, I want there to be a feeling associated with it so that when you wear it, it’s not just the material that is comfortable, but it’s the [comforting] idea that what you’re wearing is special and it makes you feel different than wearing something you picked off the rack. 

With everything I create, I really keep that in mind – will somebody want to keep this? Will they want to pass it on to somebody else? Will they be able to repair it? That’s the only way that I could make it make sense for me. 

FreeQuency: Tell me a little bit about yourself as a creative and as an artist outside of this exhibition. 

Gurleen: I like to say that I’m more of a creative, rather than any one discipline. Sometimes I’ll draw, sometimes I’ll make an animation, sometimes I’ll grow a garden, sometimes I’ll make clothes, and it’s all under the umbrella of my creative language.  I think of myself as a problem solver and I have different mediums to express different stories or feelings. 

For instance with fashion design, I can create a three dimensional world. I’m an animator as well where you’re seeing [my work] it on a screen and [the] story feels more literal. With fashion design, you’re using fabric and materials, and another human being to tell that story, so for me, it’s like having a playground and having different equipment within the playground.