Once, during a visit to Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, I wandered into the Gallery of Beauties – 38 portraits of the women King Ludwig II considered the most exquisite of his time. Standing among those long-gone faces, I found myself contemplating the idealisation of beauty.

At home, in front of the mirror, I studied the lines that time had etched into my own face. I looked at my hands, growing bonier by the day, my sunken eyes… I recalled the women in the gallery: captured at their most radiant moment, immortalised in paint. Figures of a divine perfection that would never fade.

What did the women in Ludwig’s palace – growing older just like me – think of their perfect counterparts in Ludwig’s gallery? How did they feel as the gap between themselves and their portrait widened with the years?

So, to liberate them from this plight I took up the needle. I used embroidery to break into those ghostly portraits, leaving my mark on them. I stitched in my own language, making them age. Because even in decline, there’s a certain beauty – it’s part of being human. Stitch by stitch, I made them mortal again.

Embroidery has always been part of my life. My grandmother, who was a trouser-maker, taught me to work with my hands as a child, and by the age of four I was already practicing stitches. I also studied fashion history, and today I live between Leuven, Belgium, and Milan, Italy, creating embroidery with beads, sequins, and metallic threads on organza, linen, and cotton.