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

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

The story of “The serpent’s thread” follows the fragmented information 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 have been meant to show a lady’s talent, diligence, and ethical value, representing her worth as a possible future spouse.

Yet all however one of many sisters by no means married; their textiles – complicated, 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 ladies. The unconventional lives of the sisters opened house 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: held collectively like an archipelago via distance, gaps, and what was left untold.

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