Connection. Disconnection.
What do these words mean to you? I want you to close your eyes…. think of a time you felt connected/disconnected.
Who was there? What were you doing? How did you feel? What was happening around you?
Now we want you to think of:
What has been important in your life? What do you remember? What feelings have been prominent?
Lastly, think about these things:
How are you connected/disconnected from fibre/textile production?
How do you think others are connected/disconnected from fibre/textile production?
How does this affect our culture? Our values? Our environment? Our traditions?
Do you feel you are connected/disconnected to your own stories, histories and culture through fibre? How so?
How do you feel fibre manifests in identity and body politics? How does that relate to your identity and gender expression?
How does fibre connect to Feminism? Racism? Activism? Social Justice?
How does fibre connect or disconnect communities, families, friends, neighbours?
How are you connected/disconnected from the environment and nature?
These are the questions we spent months thinking about and discussing. We invite you to spend some time thinking about these questions and your own answers and perspectives to them.
If you would like, write down your ideas, document your thoughts, maybe make a poem.
Then please send us your thoughts and writings.
Over the next nine months we will be collecting thoughts, ideas, stories, and recollections from the community on these ideas. We will be putting them together in a digital quilt that represents these themes and ideas. We will have this digital quilt as an accompanying element to our in-person installation and it will be an ongoing engagement and open conversation.
Disconnection and Community
Where we started: Over the last six months we have been building a fibre based project that is based around the ideas of "Connection and Disconnection." We have been exploring the concepts, different fabric mediums and what areas of these themes are important to us. These themes can manifest in many ways.
These are the ideas that kept re-emerging:
Disconnection from traditional fibre practices and value of fibre has led to the fast fashion environmental crisis we are in today and loss of traditional information, and sustainable practices.
Disconnection from culture/history due to displacement, immigration, and cultural genocide has left us culturally depleted and we have lost identities, traditions, stories and elder guidance in practice.
Connection of fibre to identity, gender norms and expression, body politics, body policing, dress codes/policing, and how gender clothing identifiers are increasingly appearing in politics and influencing legislation.
Disconnection from each other, our communities, and our support networks has led to increased polarization, and decrease in empathy and willingness to understand.
From this we developed the statement:
"Using the arts, how might we weave a deeper connection with ourselves, each other and the environment."
My Practice. Why Fibre Art?
I have been working with fibre and using it in my practice since a young child. I am a first generation daughter of Hungarian refugees on my paternal side. I also come from a line of Western European colonial settlers on my maternal side. I have lost the rich history of fibre, textile, storytelling and embroidery in my own culture. Hungarian embroidery and fibre practice is well known throughout the world and is rich with regional differences, symbolism of stitch, imagery and composition, etc. Because of my family's displacement, I do not have elder guidance for traditional practices in my own culture and I am now relying on the internet to teach me. This leads to gaps and misunderstandings in knowledge and practice. I feel disconnected from my own culture, traditions, and stories.
Also as an activist, environmentalist, and intersectional feminist this medium is very important to me because of many of the reasons listed throughout these pages. I love how craftivism allows a softer way of voicing thoughts, ideas, and opinions. This gentle form of protest allows folks to connect with the themes and ideas more than they would a more aggressive form. I love how this medium has been used by feminists, activists, and marginalized populations for generations to share thoughts, feelings, stories, and experiences. Using this medium is a subversive act of defiance in itself, as centuries ago was designated as “craft” in an attempt to make it “lesser than” and a weaker, not as important, art form. Rich, powerful, white males, in an effort to subjugate and create power hierarchies, purposefully made this art form lower status and one to only be practiced by women, BIPOC, non-gender confirming, and low-class folks. Therefore, it has been used for centuries as the voice of the marginalized to contradict the patriarchy. By using this “craft” for activism we are amplifying its power and reclaiming it’s value, and importance.
Lastly, because of the way this medium has lost incredible value in the last century, and the impact it’s overproduction is currently having on the environment, I think that by reclaiming and using materials that would otherwise be waste, we can make a small impact on our world. While it is not huge, and will never counter the amount of textile waste made on a daily basis, it is still a small counter protest to this hurricane of over-consumption and gluttony.
Next Steps.
With our project we are working with community members connected to the Village Square hub and host a series of summer and fall pop up community engagement sessions to contribute to the piece. The piece will bring a nature experience indoors.
From June-December 2023- We will be hosting different fabric art sessions with the community where people can create and add elements to the piece that will be installed in the venue. In addition we will bring in other elements such as writing, poetry, and conversation circles to dive deeper into these themes. We will continue these discussions with people and build deeper connection between each other.
Folks can delve deeper on the questions at the top of the page and then send them in to digitally participate in the greater engagement.
All digital and analog manifestations of this initiative will be showcased in spring 2024.