the healing quilt. (2021)
The work consists of four separate photographic objects.
The main piece is a “quilt’’ which is made of 99 photographs sewn together by hand with the silver thread and finishing with the photographic lining sewn to it using the red thread. The squares have been printed on two different papers, Hah- nemühle Photo Rag Baryta and Matte Litho-Realistic , to differ the texture of the surface. Each of 99 photographs represent one day in the life of a fruit bowl, full of fruits.
I have used the photographs I have taken during the first lockdown, in march 2020.
I turned to the photographic medium to document these new, weird and slightly scary times.
As part of my documentary project I have photographed the fruit bowl for 100 days of the spring lockdown and those were the photographs I decided to make the quilt out of.
I contrast photography, which cuts time into fragments, with the mending quality of working with thread, which holds the parts together.
I was inspired by a story of a “healing quilt” passed on from a generation to generation of indigeus people from Alabama’s Gee’s Bend. The quilt is being used whenever someone is ill and needs the power of the spirits of ancestors. Through work with the needle and through introducing the thread into the structure and physicality of photography I intended to enrich it with the femininity and strength of women. I have then offered the “healing quilt” to friends and family. By this act I was hoping to share my conceptual shelter with the outside world. I documented those gestures, turning yet again to the medium of photography and craft of stitching. Ironically, I have been finishing this work while suffering from covid myself. Once more I benefited from a slow meditative process of working with thread.
The quilt holds my story of dealing with mental strain brought by the pandemic.
