22/02/2022 – Repetitive working

Moving forward with this project through the semester, I have chosen to really focus in on an idea, in order to hit my three points from my previous reflection. This meant really deciding what I felt suited my ideas the best, and what I felt most strongly about making.

What I chose to work with in my work was the sculptural cells. Fabric dome-like shapes, using them to make sculptures, a costume, etc. Building these pieces towards an installation and video.

This also means I have spent a lot of time making the same thing. Repeating a process over and over again.

Iron the fabric, draw the leaf like shape, cut out the pieces (3-5 for each individual piece), stitch together, trim edges, turn right side out, fill with stuffing.

I did this in batches of 10-20 and am still currently doing so. It is giving me a lot of time to reflect on the work, to get into a working routine. At times, I feel as though I am almost on auto-pilot making these pieces, moving through them, wondering when I will have enough. It is a good challenge for me to really spend time with a work, to fully commit to making it, to embrace a lack of immediacy, to embrace process and engage with the material.

Seeing the cells multiply through making them, is supporting my vision and ideas of creating visual reference of the medical condition and the female body. Uncontrollably falling from bags, being carried with me from my home studio to my uni studio. I imagine by the time I have made enough for this project, there will be hundreds and it still wont be enough.

I think as well of the weight of them – logistically and metaphorically. Logistically a large portion of them are being incorporated into a costume, they are filled with scrap fabric (for costs and environmental reasons) which weighs them down, they are heavy to carry, restricting movement, making the wearer of the costume into an unrecognisable mass of strange round shapes. This leads into a metaphorical sense, seeing them as cells, they bring the inside out, a horror of what the body is made up of. With my focus being on the condition of endometriosis and its uncanny comparison to the wandering womb, it makes movement of these cells visible, turns them into a creature (performed by someone but a creature nonetheless).

A conversation in a recent crit made me consider some of these points, as well as the use of the textile in my work. A traditionally feminine way of working, industrialised through machinery, and produced on a large scale. Aside from ethical implications of this, I am considering how the divides between craft, design, and art, can be tested through these means. I enjoy the use of taking something quite traditionally craft/feminine based, and making it something grotesque. Using what would be feminine working – sewing and making it uncanny; the homely use of quilting and craft techniques subverted into these horrible settings, resembling the body but not quite. This part of the project feeds into my original idea of the ‘glamorous monster’.

Through this repetitive process of working, I have been able to consider the way in which I work, as outlined above. I want to move forward with this, committing to larger scales of work, placing great emphasis onto the ideas I have – because I think they do deserve them. I mean hey, If I cant stick up for my work who else will. And that’s what I want to achieve through this, embracing the monstrous feminine, opening conversations about the female body and its conditions.