Taking up Space: In Discussion with Hanna Washburn

Hanna Washburn in the studio, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Artist Hanna Washburn’s work is undoubtedly playful and lively. Soft forms bulge, sag, and spill over, camouflaged in bold and delicate floral patterns stitched together. The sculptures are unapologetic, taking up space and asserting themselves, challenging the expectations put on feminine bodies. Washburn often incorporates nostalgic items from her childhood such as dollhouse furniture and her grandmother’s curtains, and other recycled fabrics from her everyday life. Embodying a range from the maternal to the sensual, Washburn’s work highlights the complicated experience of being in a body that is constantly transforming and changing.

Both an artist and a curator, Hanna Washburn is based in Beacon, New York, and holds a BA in Fine Art and English from Kenyon College, and an MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, among others. Hanna has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony, and the Textile Arts Center. Currently, she works in the Curatorial Department at Storm King Art Center.

Hanna Washburn. Small Step. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Your textile sculptures are so animated and lively. Can you discuss how you’re inspired by the body to create your sculptures?

There is so much of the body in my sculptures, a body caught in the process of morphing and changing. Something that is in flux and not static. I think of my sculptures as representing different versions of the same body in different moods and phases. A body that is slipping between different things, that is many things at once. 

I am also interested in capturing certain moods and gestures with the work, without being too explicit about what exactly is happening. [I use] shapes and movement that make you think of your own body in relation. There are parts of my work that are more unsettling, but I also try to capture the joy of being in a body and the idea that all these different feelings can coexist.

Hanna Washburn. Pink Pivot. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Your sculptures assert themselves and take up space, challenging the associations and expectations put on women and femme bodies with forms that spill and sag over. Can you speak more about this concerning your work?

These things are all connected, what they look like and what they’re about—the body and expectations of femininity. They are layered in together. I construct my sculptures with this kind of patchworking as a visual tool, but it is also this thematic thing of these pieces of identity and body coming together, being stitched together.

I think especially with my freestanding sculptures, I am interested in creating something we have this almost one-to-one relationship with, like the way a viewer connects to it with their own body. This thing that’s standing, burdened but still upright—it’s struggling to stand, but it’s standing. And I think it becomes an exercise in empathy, to see something that is trying to maintain a certain balance. There is something of that I see in myself, and I believe others have that experience too. [Experiencing] how it feels to exist in a body, to feel certain expectations of your body, to feel the pressure of external definitions, so people can see and understand how to categorize you when we are really all un-categorizable. 

Our experiences in the home space are also a big factor in my work. I have a tendency to anthropomorphize things, especially in the home, like furniture. Something that is standing up has this bodily connotation for me, [like an] entity that has a certain stature. I have this irresistible urge to relate to it as a human or a living, bodily thing.

These things are all connected, what they look like and what they’re about—the body and expectations of femininity.

Hanna Washburn. Swell. Photo by Ally Schmaling. Photo courtesy of the artist.

You integrate certain childhood and nostalgic items in your work. Can you explain this inspiration further?

I am a big-time scavenger of things in the world but also of my own life, like clearing out my parent’s attic and pulling [items] that remain from my childhood as these kinds of fossils.

I incorporate things like my old doll beds, or toys or small little objects into my work. If I don’t still have the actual thing it often becomes about its memory. I try to recreate either something I had when I was a child, or an aesthetic that was formative for me. I think about childhood a lot, that identity-forming period. I was always really drawn to objects and creatures. 

I am also interested in the aesthetic of the suburban modesty of my upbringing. A lot of floral patterns, and a lot of muted domestic colors and textures. And again, sometimes I use literal curtains from my grandma’s house. But sometimes it’s about trying to recreate something that I remember or saw in pictures. I am interested in using that kind of modest aesthetic-to take its flatness and make it lumpy.

Hanna Washburn. Curiosities. Photo by Ally Schmaling. Photo courtesy of the artist.

I like how you use recycled fabrics and items from your life. It’s nice from an ecological perspective as well. Have you always been drawn to using textiles as a medium? Can you expand on your interest in using recycled materials and textiles?

Textiles are all around us. We wear them, we live with them in our homes, and we have so many attachments to them. It’s this intimate material we wear on our bodies and sleep in. I think a lot of people are drawn to textiles for reasons of comfort and familiarity. I’ve always really been interested in recycling things, both from an environmental standpoint, but also for the richness of something that has been around for a long time, that has changed hands and has its own memory. 

As far as sewing techniques, I’m a big fan of the whipstitch. It’s one of the first stitches you learn, this overhand, repetitive stitch. It also shows up in surgical stitches, so it has that bodily connotation. I love the visual of how it stitches things together; it’s just such an additive process. And my practice is very improvisational, so when I’m in the studio, I am making visual connections and directly responding and stitching. It feels like this extension of my brain in my hand.

I learned how to sew at home from my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. It’s a practice that I learned and inherited from outside of art school, outside the institution. It feels personal, as something that I learned from women in my family that I’m continuing as well as complicating. Having this practice connected to the personal and the familial makes a lot of sense to me.

Hanna Washburn. Rosy. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Who are some artists (or other things) that inspire you and your practice?

I try to look at as many different things as I can, not just sculpture or fiber art. I like to engage with a lot of other forms of art, too. I love to go to the movies; I love to read fiction. I try to immerse myself in different kinds of storytelling because it adds richness to my practice, but also just as a person in the world, and the way I think about things.

I’m lucky to know so many artists, visual artists and other kinds [of artists] with all different practices. [We have] casual interactions talking about ideas, going to see things, having informal crits, creative exchanges, and collaborations. I think a lot of my daily inspiration comes from surrounding myself with people with that kind of energy. And I treasure it, because it is important to keep questioning and pushing not just your own stuff but looking at so many other things and learning about other people and their practices and their stories. It’s just so enriching. I have my list of visual artists that I turn to again and again, but that daily stuff is equally important to me because it feeds the [creativity].

Check out Hanna Washburn’s work in the upcoming exhibition Homespun, a survey of textile artists in the Hudson Valley at the Samuel Dorksy Museum – SUNY New Paltz, opening on February 4th, 2023. 

Washburn will also be part of the NYC group show, Paroxysm, curated by Alison Pirie, from February 8 – 23rd at Westbeth Gallery, NYC. 

Additionally, Washburn will have a solo show this fall at the Lake George Arts Project from September 23 -October 27th, 2023.

You can find more of her work on her website and Instagram.

Weaving it all on the Dancefloor: A Discussion with dani lopez

dani lopez portrait. Courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Harper Wellman

There is something eternal and necessary about textiles — Clothing, canvas, tapestries, and tools are just a few of the almost universal applications of textile work. For dani lopez, textiles are at the center of an artist practice that transforms an ancient and ubiquitous undertaking into a modern and personal endeavour. Her work entwines weaving, text, and modern iconography with queerness, camp, pop culture, and personal experience, generating a body of work that is both sincere and relatable.

After studying at the University of Oregon for her BFA, and later at the California College of the Arts for her MFA, lopez has continuously shown at a variety of spaces, including Tropical Contemporary, Amos Eno Gallery, and the Frank Ratchye Project Space among others. As her work continues to evolve, the personal experience expressed in lopez’s early work has amalgamated into an expression of queer collectiveness, creating a cohesive body of work in which ongoing themes are given space to exist and evolve in time and various incarnations.


dani lopez,(for the ACT-UP dykes who cared for their gay brothers while they were dying of AIDS), film still from BPM (Beats per Minute) Hand-embroidered sequins, imitation silk, thread, and interfacing 36 in. x 18 in. 2019.

Can you tell us a little bit about what attracted you to textiles? You describe your work as a sight of both regret and redemption. Can you elaborate on that for us?

When I discovered textiles, it was the start of some soul searching. I was working with a fibers professor who is an out, Black man. I have often said that meeting and learning from him was a lot like a gay friend taking you out and showing you the ropes. I didn’t come out until my early 30s. Textiles gave me the space and time to process my life and why being straight felt so damn hard. Weaving was the meditative space that slowly unravelled the fact that I couldn’t stay in the closet anymore. I knew I was queer for over a decade, but thought, well if I like men too, why make it harder on myself? (This is something many bisexual women are familiar with). I can’t separate my coming out from discovering textiles. They are inextricably connected. My coming out late in life has so much regret tied to it. For a long time, there was also shame connected with that regret—Now I see that regret as an opportunity. I can attempt to redeem myself or atone for all the times I chose a man over a woman/non-binary person. Now, I’m giving myself back that lost time, the lost opportunities, the lost hook-ups, and those lost loves with the work I make and how I make it.

dani lopez, i want to be her/i want her. synthetic hair, muslin, fabric paint, cardboard 60 in. x 24 in. 2017.

dani lopez, your sinner in secret. handwoven fabric, cotton yarn dyed with commercial dye, crochet thread, dowel, finials, curtain tie backs 67”x108” 2016.

When looking at your work, there is seemingly a shift over time. Your early work, such as pieces like i want to be her/i want her, 2017, and your sinner in secret, (2016) are much softer and femme, evoking ideas of magic girls and comfortability. Your more recent works, DYKES ON THE DANCEFLOOR, 2019, are tonally darker and almost mysterious. There is also a shift, seemingly from the personal experience to the experiences of a community. How did this progression happen?

While the focus now is on the larger project, DYKES ON THE DANCEFLOOR, I shift back and forth from community-minded work to personal work. The shift is a big one and it came from the desire to see myself in culture and to also illustrate how and where other queer women could find their stories in the world. Coming out later in life is often compared to a “second adolescence” and that has been true for me. I was searching, desperately, to find stories that looked like mine or just to see stories of queer women in general (beyond The L Word). So, once I found those images, I decided to commemorate them, to celebrate them, and to adorn them. The progression always starts as a small question or idea that begins to grow and evolve, and if it becomes big enough, I start to pursue it. Often, access to resources and limitations of space have a bigger impact on the work than I’d like. With DYKES ON THE DANCEFLOOR, I had just finished grad school and lost access to the loom I worked on. I moved into a small studio and I wondered to myself, well, okay, what do I make now? What’s that saying? Necessity is the mother of invention? In my case, it was true.

dani lopez (for the trans dykes who never felt safe enough to come out), still from tv show Euphoria. Hand-embroidered sequins, imitation silk, thread, and interfacing 36 in. x 18 in. 2019.

Pop culture plays a big role in your practice. Euphoria, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Robyn are just a few references you have made throughout your career. Why was it important for you to consciously include and highlight queer, and queer-claimed, media and performers in your work?

I’m so glad you picked up these references because I often wonder if anyone is catching these signals I’m throwing out into the world. I would say personal and cultural research are at the crux of my practice. We find ourselves, as queers, looking out into the culture that at times doesn’t reflect much back. So, when I do find these signals being sent out to queer folks, I feel compelled to continue to push that signal forward. How far can these signals reach? Will someone feel connected to me or my work because they see a certain signal or clue? Artists love to leave little clues around in their work for certain audiences and having it picked up on is truly such a joy to me. It’s an acknowledgment, it’s a nod, it’s an “I see you,” which is what I’ve always wanted, being a straight-presenting queer woman. I’m not “visibly queer” (whatever that even means), so I am constantly trying to signal to others that yes, I am one of you.

We find ourselves, as queers, looking out into the culture that at times doesn’t reflect much back. So, when I do find these signals being sent out to queer folks, I feel compelled to continue to push that signal forward.

The dancefloor is another recurring theme, and I know personally, the dancefloor and clubs are often safe spaces for queer communities. How have you dealt with the loss of physical queer spaces throughout the pandemic, both personally and within your practice? Now that those spaces are opening again, what are you most looking forward to having back in your life?

Personally, it’s been a huge blow to the sense of community. [I miss] the sense of abandon, joy, and research that happens for me at a dance club. Within my practice, it means that I have to do other sorts of research and looking. Whether that’s through mainstream media, music, literature, or critical theory, I’ve continued to look and attempt to find others to talk about this. I’m still not ready to be in a club space, enclosed spaces still make me really nervous, and I highly doubt I’ll be going to a club until next year. For me, that just means more reading, more research, [and] more conversations. I miss the dance floor so much, but safety is important to me. But when I am ready, I’m just hoping to see joy, excitement, and lots of queer desire.

Finally, what can we expect to see from you in the future, and where can our readers find you online?

You can expect more work! The DYKES ON THE DANCEFLOOR series will get more sculptural and strange. I just got a grant to help with the exploration of that project. By the end of the year, I should have my own loom (!), so you’ll be seeing new weavings too.  Next year I am in the Bay Area iteration of Queer Threads curated by John Chaich, which I am so excited to be a part of. I will also be talking queer textiles with another artist, Liz Harvey, on Textiles Arts LA this September.

You can find more of dani’s work on Instagram at  @dani___lopez___, or at www.danilopez.us.

Folklore and Fashion: In Discussion with Reilly Knowles

Reilly Knowles. “Taking, Giving Root.” Embroidered fabric collage (cotton, linen, wool, beeswax, sumac, yellow onion, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, avocado, wood and nails). 16¼”x9”. 2019.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Using the language of feminism, folklore and religious icons, interdisciplinary artist Reilly Knowles visualizes the liberation of monsters living somewhere between life and death, male and female, human and nonhuman, and reality and fantasy – exploring the creative, liminal space between dualities. Drawing particularly from ancient Irish art and an eco-centric ethos, he constructs artworks which celebrate living entities that society attempts to tame into exploitable classifications, including the land itself. Knowles addresses how the western obsession with binaries hinders the spectrum of possibilities.

Working in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, textiles, and using natural dyeing techniques, Knowles creates art that explores how women, queer and transgender people are labelled as ‘Other.’ He envisions a radical enfolding of these bodies into an understanding of nature, with care towards women, queer people, and the environment as crucial components of working towards a healthier ecosystem. Recently, he also started a project called Swingout Sewing to document his process of hand-sewing a 1920’s wardrobe while conducting historical research, adapting the designs to meet his needs as a trans man.

Splitting his time between London and Milton, ON, Knowles is a recent graduate of Western University’s Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts program, with a Specialization in Studio Arts. He has exhibited work since 2015, showing in such venues as Artlab Gallery (London, ON), Good Sport (London, ON) and Holcim Gallery (Milton, ON). He is a recipient of the Gray Creative Arts Award in Visual Arts, the Mackie Cryderman Award for Excellence in Visual Arts, and the Kate and Robert Taylor Scholarship in Visual Arts, among others.

Reilly Knowles. “Nativity.” Wood, acrylic paint, coloured pencil, straw, sand and found figurines. 18 ¾”x16¾”x11¾”. 2019.

Your piece Nativity (2019) is a sculpture depicting a nativity scene, constructed from wood and painted, featuring straw and figurines. Can you speak more about how you use religious iconography, symbolism, and folklore in your work?

I’m really drawn to working with myths and legends. I love stories that use the fantastical to describe earthly experiences, like the cycles of life and death. I accumulate these stories over time, and they cross-pollinate in my imagination, sometimes reinforcing one another and retaining their recognizable points, while other times reassembling into personal mythologies that aren’t as easily picked out.

Stories are constantly changing, even though we might be able to trace their lineages into the far past. Biblical stories are interpreted in a wide variety of ways according to the disposition of whichever Christian culture, sect, or individual is telling them. Since these stories are meant to describe reality, the storyteller holds the immense power of ostensibly interpreting truth. For myself, even though I wasn’t raised as an active Christian, I absorbed Christian stories and their messaging around gender and bodies on a deep level. Nativity marked the beginning of an artistic exploration into stories surrounding the Virgin Mary. I wanted to see what would happen to the Nativity if Mary’s presence was centralized and liberated from a focus on her reproductive capacity. I think the result is a different kind of nativity – a birth into an exultant and independent female power.

How does your art explore the liminal gap between binaries, such as man and woman, life and death, and human and non-human? How do you find navigating this in-between space encourages you creatively?

Western society is very dualistic, but things aren’t nearly as black-and-white as we’d like to believe. For example, the male/female binary, which overwhelming favours males, collapses under a recognition of intersex individuals. The human/non-human binary, which favours humans above all other lifeforms and finds its logical conclusion in environmental destruction, becomes a mostly arbitrary distinction when we grasp the depth of our relationship with other living beings, like the trillions of bacteria that make up our bodies. These liminal gaps between binaries have immense creative potential because they’re so expansive. Embracing liminality is like getting to paint with infinite shades of grey as opposed to just that black and white.

One way I try to work with liminality is by combining supposedly opposing imagery. I like to create characters that are both male and female, plant and animal, or dead and alive. One of my favourite subjects is the mandrake plant. In legend, its root resembles a human body, and when torn from the earth, it kills its attacker with its piercing cry. The mandrake is at the fascinating intersection of fact and myth, growing and destroying, human and inhuman, and above and below. I like how it’s neither here nor there, and that’s precisely what makes it potent.

Reilly Knowles.”The Mandrake Field.” Oil on wooden panel. 36″x48″. 2019.

Your work touches on environmental themes, addressing how people attempt to classify and restrict living things including the land itself. In what ways do you address the environment and ecologies through your art?

I think my relationship with the environment is always going to be evolving, along with the ways I express that relationship in my work. I’m hesitant to make any definitive statements about what the environment signifies to me as an artist, because I know I have a long way to go in terms of fully unpacking what it means to be a white settler relating to the land in Southern Ontario. But in terms of what I’ve produced up to this point, much of my work has been about using religious imagery to frame my immediate environs as spiritual. I think that if white people put the same energy into venerating and glorifying the rivers and woodlands in our backyards as has been expended on cathedrals and illuminated gospels, then maybe we wouldn’t be experiencing environmental catastrophe.

By the land being classified and restricted, I mean that Western society teaches that humans are separate from the environment, when in reality we exist on a continuum in which we rely on and blend into one another. I’m trying to make art that collapses my body back into everything around it. One of the ways I’ve been doing this is by dyeing textiles with plants available within walking distance of my home. To be a responsible natural dyer, I have to learn what plants to use, and where and how they grow. I have to think about the seasons, the weather conditions, and the sensitivity of London’s ecosystems. It’s a slow process. It means I have to pay attention to and care about the land. It forces me to see first-hand that all art does have an environmental impact, one way or another.

Who are some artists that are influential to you and your practice?

Definitely Kiki Smith and Shary Boyle. Seeing [that] there were artists engaging with fairy tales, and that they were being taken seriously, really encouraged me early on to explore folklore without feeling apologetic. Also, Allyson Mitchell. A lot of her work operates at this intersection of crafting and queer culture, which is where I like to be.

I noticed that you have started a new project called Swingout Sewing. Can you explain more about the project and what your process has been like? In what ways do you think constructing vintage clothing can help navigate gender and queerness?

Swingout Sewing is a project where I’m documenting my process of hand-sewing a 1920’s wardrobe using historical research, while also adapting designs to meet my needs as a trans man. Right now, I’m working on the undergarment layer, which has involved reading period sewing manuals to figure out historically appropriate sewing techniques, as well as adapting original patterns. After each stage of construction, I post an article about it to the project’s website, swingoutsewing.ca.

I never knew I could be a man when I was a kid because I didn’t know trans people existed. I didn’t see them in the media, and I certainly didn’t see them in history class. When you don’t exist in the cultural imaginary of the past, it’s hard to imagine yourself in the present or the future. So, for me, making historical garments specifically designed for my trans body is about imagining those invisibilized folks of the past we might today consider transmasculine, and connecting to them in a very real, material way through the act of getting dressed. It’s also about honouring my trans body and attending to its needs, about adornment over camouflage. So much advice given to trans men beginning their transitions is about disappearing into mainstream masculine tastes. I want to follow my passion for vintage despite the threat of a conspicuous masculinity, while also rejecting the problematic attitudes (namely racism, misogyny, ableism and queerphobia) associated with the past.

In addition, there’s something delightfully queer about transitioning to live in the world as a man but poring over antique seamstress manuals and perfecting my buttonholes. This act of learning vintage menswear construction actually involves learning a lot about historical femmes and feminized labour.

Reilly Knowles. “Swingout Sewing, documentation.”2020.

Do you have any advice for someone who is first learning how to sew or work with textiles?

My first piece of advice is that just about every community is going to be chock full of elders who’d love to pass down their skills. Online tutorials can be very helpful, but they can’t compare to one-on-one teaching from an experienced textile artist. If you’re in a larger city, then you may even have some textile guilds at your disposal. Granted, your mileage in these spaces may vary if you’re visibly queer, but it’s worth considering.

Secondly, you shouldn’t listen to the people who are definitely going to tell you textile art isn’t art. Textiles are devalued because they’ve tended to be made by women. If people look down on your practice, it’s not a reflection of your practice’s worth, but rather of their unexamined sexism.

You can find more of Reilly Knowles’ work on his website, Instagram, and at Swingout Sewing.

Productive Discomfort at Xpace Cultural Centre

By Rebecca Casalino

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Productive Discomfort, 2019. Installation view, works by Jessica Watkin, Anne Ruccetto, Susan Blight, and James Yeboah in view. Photo credit: Polina Teif

March 1-30, 2019

Anne Rucchetto, Kaythi, Seiji, Susan Blight, Jessica Watkin,

Heidi Cho, and James Yeboah

Curated by Lauren Cullen

As part of Myseum Intersections Festival: Revisionist Toronto.

 

Women’s craft and labour is a topic explored in feminist circles, yet we do not see it often directly reflected in the mediums of contemporary artists’ practices. I myself am guilty of this, citing women’s labour in my own work, and comparing the repeated actions in my practice to sewing or knitting. Walking into Xpace and seeing Productive Discomfort for the first time I was happily surprised by bright colours and political discourse. This was not the women’s craft I had grown up learning.

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Susan Blight, An Unwelcome Mat for these Times, Niwiiji Anishinaabeg, 2019. Photo credit: Polina Teif

One of the carpets that caught my eye hung from the west wall and had long trails of pink and red yarn streaming down from a rectangle emblazoned with an Anishinaabemowin phrase. The artist, Susan Blight, lifts the rug from the floor indicating to the viewer they are not easily welcomed by the artist. This challenge presented by Blight is delivered with an object filled with labour and embroidered with a language foreign to a settler audience. The anger surrounding Canada’s relationship to the Indigenous communities is felt in Toronto with protests supporting Wet’suwet’en land defenders gaining momentum and residents choosing to call the city Tkaronto, a Mohawk word meaning “where there are trees in the water”. Land acknowledgments have become the standard at gatherings to keep the history of colonial violence in our minds. This infusion of Indigenous politics into the urban settler mainstream discussion is long overdue. In my own primary and secondary education, the history of Turtle Island’s Indigenous peoples was a hasty stereotypical sketch of a complex culture the invading settlers refused to acknowledge. It was only in university, through my own course selection, I began to learn about the rich art historical canon of the Aboriginal, Metis and Inuit peoples. As settlers, we must pressure our institutions to engage with Indigenous voices so we can honour the flourishing communities on the land they cared for long before settlers landed here.  Blight’s refusal to lay down her welcome mat reads as a message to myself and fellow settlers that our presence is still not welcome, and our support is too little and too late.

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Kaythi, Our Lady of Profound Failure, 2019. Photo Credit: Polina Teif

Our Lady of Profound Failure created by Kaythi was another rug that drew my attention. It’s deep red subject popped against the blue background. The rug had oranges and greens, woven as a kind of collage, dancing around the edges making the composition playful and fun. Visitors are encouraged to kneel on the rug; this made me giggle, thinking about kneeling in connection to prayer and oral sex. The rug pops with its bright colours and DYKES ONLY is written in bold black across a bent figure. The red distorted figure bends with its back arching along the top of the rug. This work claims space by welcoming an exclusive social group. Spaces reserved for ‘dykes’ are rare and usually very fluid, for example, The Beaver, a gay bar/café. I don’t consider myself a dyke, but I feel the word hooked into a rug allows queers like myself to be in on the joke.

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Kaythi, Our Lady of Profound Failure, 2019. Photo Credit: Polina Teif

What interests me most about this exhibition is the dedication to labour and the dissemination of knowledge. For the exhibition, Lauren Cullen taught the artists how to make hooked rugs, a craft she has been practicing for nine years. This passing of knowledge without the platform of a classroom or the internet is labourious and intimate, creating an immediate community. I attended Cullen’s event at Xpace to learn how to make hooked rugs and happily sat at a table with a graphic design student, an architect, a jeweller, and a comedian. Cullen stood in front of the video projecting artists in the show making their rugs. Each of us peeked up at the video from time to time to compare our tiny squares to their work. Cullen came around to each table spending time with attendee’s offering them tea and cheezies. The room was filled with light conversation as everyone concentrated on their tiny rugs. Materials were spread across a table complete with leggings, shirts, yarn, and pre-sliced striped of cloth. At the end of the session, we were all hesitant to leave and crowded around Cullen to individually thank her for such a lovely day of bonding and making. Cullen’s practice seems to revolve around these kinds of exchanges and community building as she discussed with one of the participants her passion for “unlearning”. Artists from the show were also in attendance and sat at the tables with participants happy to talk about their experiences learning with Cullen for the show. Cullen created a learning environment of balance and calm.

 

Cullen uses “the social practice and conventions of rug hooking as a tool for critical education, grounded in anti-racist, anti-colonial and feminist queer crip frameworks” to replace traditional institutional and academic methods of teaching. In creating these ‘unwelcome’ mats Cullen leads artists Rucchetto, Kaythi, Seiji, Blight, Watkin, Cho, and Yeboah in their rug hooking practices to convey their own political narratives surrounding craft, textile works, and labour. Productive Discomfort engages with a myriad of political topics allowing each artist to harness textiles to hook their point of view. My relationship with textiles has never been so complex and politically engaging. As a child, I sat with my Nonna on the couch watching her crochet blankets and listening to stories about her younger more nimble fingers embroidering sheets, handkerchiefs, and pillowcases for her wedding chest. Cullen uses feminist theory and rug hooking to identify, “a significant site of matrilineage: a site of material culture gaining legitimacy through an inter-generational practice of passing down rugs and skills between women.” This summarizes my experience with textiles and shapes textile art in a feminist light allowing myself and other contemporary artists to engage with rug hooking on a new level. Productive Discomfort brings the conversation around textile arts into the conversation surrounding community, marginalized narratives, and women’s labour.