Gaps and Ruptures

Installation of textile prints and bead embroidery
Shown at Galleri Konstfack, Stockholm in January 2021

In this work I studied femininity and truth through a vintage dress. In vintage garments, we are provided the possibility to access knowledge and experience of past generations, through the touch of owners past. I wanted to explore this garment as a container of memory and meaning. I wondered, can the empty garment tell us something about the nature of womanhood through the ghostly lingering presence of owners past?
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I wore the dress, studied its material and composition, I photographed myself in it, performing everyday tasks but also posing in a manner that the dress seemed to expect me to.
I treated the photographs for textile printing, prepared silk screen frames and printed mixed fibre fabrics in different techniques. As the different print techniques affected the different fibre types separately, a layering of information was created in the textile images. In the display, I hung the pieces to create a further layering effect. I was interested in the layers of meaning to my own and others’ feminine identity – how the essential, the myth and the performed are entangled in layers of truth.