The serpent’s thread – PhMuseum

Like a textile containing many threads, “The serpent’s thread” serves as a visible retelling of the fem textile (hello)tales that merge documentation with myth-making, historical past with fiction.

As a toddler, I spent numerous hours observing my beloved grandmother, a Polish countryside textile employee, stitching collectively scraps of supplies into issues that had been new, great and smooth. In the identical approach as a storyteller weaves many components right into a story, her textiles consisted of many fibers, many threads, and finally, many items of supplies. Never formally educated to jot down as a result of gender politics on the time, her textile works had been her language, carrying a data of generations of ladies earlier than me. However, as soon as she handed away, all her textiles, perceived as of no worth, had been discarded or misplaced.

Inspired by the lacking archive of her life’s work, I started tracing different histories of ladies whose textiles communicate the place data fall silent, persevering with the intergenerational legacy of weaving scraps into tales.

The story of “The serpent’s thread” follows the fragmented data and folklore surrounding the 5 Andersson sisters, who lived within the small Swedish village of Åsmundtorp on the flip of the twentieth century. Their historical past, partly documented and partly mythologised, revolves across the textiles they produced as their elaborate dowries. They had been meant to reveal a girl’s talent, diligence, and ethical price, representing her worth as a possible future spouse.

Yet all however one of many sisters by no means married; their textiles – advanced, by no means used and completely preserved, function a parallel to my grandmother’s work. They exist as an ambiguous archive of home labour and societal expectations positioned upon girls. The unconventional lives of the sisters opened area for speculations and native legends to emerge.

Like a textile containing many threads, “The serpent’s thread” serves as a visible retelling that merges documentation with myth-making, historical past with fiction.

With the usage of archival pictures and paperwork, staged compositions, and photographic interventions printed and layered by means of textile processes, the work is a reconstruction based mostly on a number of (hello)tales stitched collectively: these of ladies makers, of rebels, and people whose voices had been recorded, devalued, or misplaced.