Textiles

Using embroidery, weaving, crocheting, and sewing to care networks and interdependence, my textile practice build on my place-based natural dying. Feminist technoscience scholar Donna Haraway (2019) argues that “it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what concepts we think to think other concepts with,” in other words, our worlds are formed by the stories we tell and the materials that build them. By putting care into collective artmaking and caring for each other through processes of interdependent being, these textiles wordings embody feminist practices of care, justice, collaboration, and solidarity. How can collectively building textiles objects, particularly objects such as blankets or sweaters—affective objects imbued with orientations (Ahmed 2006) toward care, rest, sickness, comfort, family, grief, community, and domesticity—can serve as the material for building new worlds, epistemologies, and ontologies of care, interdependence, and activism. How might a blanket, collectively made with care for each other, materialize these abstract concepts and enable potential futurities?