Craft is a Feminist Issue: The British Textile Biennial

I like cross-stitch. I have posted many images of my work here. I particularly like subversive images that challenge expectations. Last year I saw an exhibition of the British Textile Biennial, which appeared to have been curated by Mr X Stitch.  He opened with a quote from Wikipedia (sure, we can be snobby about that, but we all use it as a common source).

"Cross-stitch is the oldest form of embroidery and can be found all over the world. Many folk museums show examples of clothing decorated with cross-stitch, especially from continental Europe, Asia, and Eastern and Central Europe."

He continued that those who do cross-stitch are taking part in a cultural craft that spans generations and continents. In 2009 at the Kostyonki evacuation site in Russia, they found ivory needles that were dated to 30,000 years ago. Embroidery has been around for millennia. Some of the world's most precious historical events are immortalised in stitch, from the Bayeux Tapestry to the Great Tapestry of Scotland. 

Cross-stitch samplers were commonly used as a way of teaching embroidery, and the crafter would literally pinpoint their place in space and time among the flowery borders and earnest phrases. A cross-stitch sampler, however, was not only a way of learning stitches, but also promoted workmanship, and for the professional embroiderers of the eighteenth century, it was a mobile CV that could be shared with potential clients. 

The industrial revolution transformed the mass production of embroidery; however, the basic cross stitch remains an important practice for embroidery students and professionals as the samples from Royal School of Needlework Degree apprentices from the twentieth century will attest.

Heartfelt and You See Food, I See Numbers by Caren Garfen

The title of Caren Garen's artwork, You See Food, I See Numbers, and the hand-stitched text on the fabric bag come directly from a tweet on the Twitter account of a young woman with anorexia nervosa. The words read 'You see tomato I see 24; You see Coke I see 454; You see noodles I see 307; You see chicken pie I see 654; You see food I see numbers'.

An innocent bag of sweets becomes a disturbing vessel for medicine capsules which spill out over a worktop. The viewer is drawn in by the miniature sweets, chocolate, fruit and vegetables, only to find text and numbers are part of the mix. A person with disordered eating will lose sight of actual food and will concentrate on its calorific value - food becomes numbers rather than an ingredient for health or pleasure. 

Detail from Heartfelt

In Heartfelt, above, the stethoscope takes on a new meaning when the hand-stitched text disc replaces the chest-piece's diaphragm. It reads, 'The mirror, in which she examines every inch of herself for hours reflects the bulges and blemishes no one else sees'.

Identity Crisis and That's How the Cookie Crumbles by Caren Garfen

In another couple of works, Caren Garfen continues this theme. The five hospital identity wristbands in Identity Crisis shrink sequentially in size as the eating disorder takes hold of the malnourished body. The text is drawn from a conversation had with a young woman who suffered from anorexia nervosa. She was admitted into emergency care on numerous occasions.  Each bracelet is stitched with the motif of a cannula. 

Detail from That's How the Cookie Crumbles

It is known that people with anorexia nervosa view their bodies as much larger than they actually are. Hand-stitched cookie motifs, each with their own text, are enlarged under an LED magnifier. The words such as 'self hate', 'restrict', 'fat' and 'struggle' obsessively turn inside the minds of those with eating disorders. 

Mr X Stitch asks if cross stitch is an art form, and immediately answers his own question; 'You bet your life it is'. He continues,

"There's a debate about art vs craft that has been going on for centuries, and it's intrinsically connected to the concept of a patriarchally dominant social paradigm. It goes something like this: 'Men are great and they make art and are powerful and strong, whereas women are meek and should sit at home crafting things like embroidered homewares.'

"It'is all a bit ridiculous, but that storyline, which I have somewhat paraphrased, has led to the idea that only certain media (painting and sculpture for example) should be labelled as art, and that crafts like cross stitch cannot achieve such spiritually lofty goals. Suffice to say, this is not the case. Just believe me when I say that any medium can be used for art as it's the creative expression that makes the difference."

Images by Crapestry

Clockwise from top left the above images are: Tourists from the Tourists collection; Gary Just Wants to Be a Real Cow from the Livestock collection; Gerberas from the Bad Kitty collection; Elwood from the Big Cats in Shades collection.

Crapestry claims to invented the word, 'a rather obvious contraction of the words crap and tapestry'. They continue,

"Contemporary commercial tapestries might be argued to be the exemplification of superficial chintz; spectacularly vapid, vividly dull, unquestioningly conformist, gaudily bourgeois, and at the same time unyieldingly time-consuming. The subject matter is often romanticised, uncritical and both exploits and reinforces established stereotypes. The outcome? Standardised 'precious things' cherished by the softly smiling, callous fingered Grandmas of the world, harmless old dears who quietly revel in the creation of 'cheeky terrier' and 'dewy chrysanthemum' cushions or 'God bless this house' picture frames. No mention of mortality, no depiction of suffering, nothing surprising, nothing funny.

"Crapestry capitalises on cross-stitch orthodoxies, exploiting their established themes. Some crapestries are funny, some are sad, and some may cause offence; but that's fine. Even the desperately sad crapestries make many people laugh, whether by a curious schadenfreude or simply because they are unaccustomed to encountering troubling subjects addressed through the medium of tapestry; its incongruous." 

More Images by Crapestry

The above images are (clockwise from top left) Five Meddling Sparrows Tear a Pentagular Rift in Our Realm and Briefly Glimpse an Unspeakable Evil from the Abominations collection; Sunset Barn from the War collection; Lamb from the Abominations collection; 1984 from the Wolves with Good Books collection.

On their website, Crapestry explains how they create these images, by 1. purchasing a cross stitch kit, 2. having an idea about how to modify it, 3. taking a digital photograph of the naked canvas, 4. using Photoshop to modify the photo of the canvas, 5. creating crapestry designs by adding coloured dots to the original canvas photograph to represent new stitches, 6. painting the new digitally modified design onto the canvas with acrylic paints, 7. stitching the kit to the new design. 

One could admire the mix of traditional and contemporary techniques: if we're sticking with those gender stereotypes; women do craft-work (as opposed to krafwerk) while men do I.T. (as opposed to 'it', which may not be capitalised or considered as important, but encompasses pretty much everything). Another angle which blends the metal with the material is that taken by Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė. She writes,

"The gradual crackling of the Iron Wall which began in the 1980s brought refreshing gusts of the westerly wind not only to adults. The growing thirst for superior ideals and freedom of speech was accompanied by an inexorable hunger for material novelties and commodities. It was not consumerism in today's sense when we are spoiled by both the excessive supply and the possibility to buy almost anything our eyes and heart desire. Back then we, the Soviet Generation X, were hungry indeed. It was a time when we took turns chewing the same piece of bubble gum with our classmate, biting into the red wrap of basically the only available option, the Lithuanian-made Paršiukas Čiukas (Chook the Piggy) gum, to tint it red, while the Estonian Kalev gum was extremely hard to come by. Then the corroded iron wall began to erode rapidly and real Western wonders entered the world of deficit.

"Among the first arrivals were the Donald Bubble Gum, valued not only for their main pre-coloured chewable content but also the inlays with adventure comic strips. We were ready to sacrifice for these wonders as much as the Native Americans or the Aborigines had been willing to exchange the last pelt for European glass beads and add a bonus gold nugget to that. In other words, giving away all the money our parents gave us for the summer holidays for a carton of Donald Bubble Gum was seen as a fair deal.

 

Just as the dollar assumed a very important role among the adults, bubble gum inlays did the same in the parallel children's world. It was not a vain childish whim, as these pieces of paper were not less valuable than the adults' paper bills. It was the children's hard currency which could be traded, exchanged for other commodities, gambled away, and, most importantly, used to buy status, peers' respect, friendship and popularity. 

"The other Donald, who seems to surpass Donald Duck and his fellows in popularity and influence, brings out these real childhood memories, which may look like cartoons to those who were born in the post-Soviet years or who have never lived this side of the Iron Wall. The two Donalds have some traits in common. Both of them attract the masses, generate a huge income, and are excellent at blowing bubbles. Yet there is also a fundamental difference - while Donald Duck has made walls fall, the other Donald is busy building them." 

Taking corporate logos and altering them with names of controversial bands seems like a simple thing to do, but someone still has to do it. And Marina Bolmini is that someone.

"I am strongly influenced by the world of media. I work on the slip of meanings relating to highly iconic images, using diverse media and techniques. I am passionate about the art of embroidery using it to produce several cycles of works of great visual impact and subtle conceptual charm."

Equally confronting although less amusing is the work of Danish artist, Lærke Jessen. She embroiders nontraditional images including still frames from You Tube videos, close ups of faces in pornography, feminine hygiene products and more. 

Finally, I really liked this string and peg board depiction of a monochrome Elvis, which has given me ideas about possibly interpreting some of my smaller pieces into larger canvases. I couldn't see any information about the artwork or the artist so I have come to my own interpretation. Perhaps it is hung on a door because Elvis has left the building.