Considering the inherent link between the industrialization of the textile industry, and the footprint this leaves on contemporary culture. It is also a thread that connects the history of place, its past, present, and future, entangled in the threads of textile making. It is this overlapping flux of time and its imprint on territory that I am exploring, specifically as it relates to Guimarães. Visualizing textile as skin, body traces on bed sheets, a place of healing as it connects to the hospital where residencies are hosted.
These inseparable and interwoven realities, of bodies, social structures, and ecological concerns carry a fragility, and one weak thread can damage an entire section of the “tissue” causing the unraveling and collapse of multiple systems. By investigating views of the interconnectivity and agencies of materiality, can we re-make and ultimately respond with more sustainable solutions?
Being in Guimaraes, a city that is interlaced with its rich connection and heritage to the textile industry, creates an interesting visual narrative, as you physically transition through these spaces and their history, but also filled with the rhythm of daily life.
For this project I was specifically interested in the inherent link between the industrialization of the textile industry, and the footprint this leaves on contemporary culture. It is also a thread that connects the history of place, its past, present, and future, entangled in the threads of textile making. It is this overlapping flux of time and its imprint on territory that I am exploring, specifically as it relates to Guimarães. Visualizing textile as skin, body traces on bed sheets, a place of healing as it connects to the hospital and the Convent Capuchos, where residencies are hosted.
For my project I had the privilege to work with Linen textile from the Têxteis Penedo factory. The structure and quality of this coarsely woven linen cloth, made it possible to mold, sculpt and shape the cloth in dimensional forms. I also worked with cotton fabric used for the manufacture of bed sheets. Cotton for me represents industrialization, and I always feel the weight of this material's historical and ecological footprint. I am also interested in investigating the collapse of industrial and human structures and how one weak thread can damage an entire section of the “tissue” or cause the unraveling and collapse of multiple social systems.
My intention was to visualize the entanglements of the passage of time, textile industry, ecological impact, and the invisible traces of labor on the body, and thinking of the conditions of textile workers. Early in the residency we had a visit to the old hospital, and the guide spoke with us about the value of the linen cloth used for bedsheets in the hospital. How when they were completely worn out in the middle of the bedsheet by the bodies, they would be cut up to make pillowcases, later smaller pillow cases, and lastly, once the cloth was too worn-out for this to be used for bandages. This idea, of re-making beds, a daily action, of care, and of re-using until the last threads, inspired my abstractions. Interlaced with these concepts I am considering salt as part of this narrative, as an element that preserves, disinfects and protects. Salt has a connection to the cod fish, omnipresent in this environment, with its beautiful glistening salted skin, but also its distinctive smell, salt is also an important element in textile dying.
These three themes, like entangled threads, the material, human and ecological, are underlying in the conversation between the works I created. These thoughts became a metaphor for how we can rethink our shared cushion of protection for the future, as this seemingly becomes smaller and smaller. I am thinking of how I can re-make my daily actions, to leave more positive traces for the future.
