One Decade of Words: textile writing 2008-2018

This lecture will reflect on the textile writing I have published over past decade. My interest in how and what we write about textiles began with my own education in weaving and literature. Today words are my material. In this lecture I will try to explain (to myself as well as you) how my textile interests migrated from threads to words. The many places I have called home over the past decade have fuelled, but perhaps also dictated, writing as my material. Words are portable. But equally important to my interests has been a desire to stay as close as possible to the material of textiles, while offering a contribution perhaps more useful than my own weavings could sustain. I will touch upon my PhD which focused on the late Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera’s use of cloth symbols and metaphors (2008); my editorial work on the anthology of textile writing published as The Textile Reader (2012); a book, Cultural Threads, which inspired the travelling exhibition, Migrations (2015-2017); and recent writing, “Rereading and Revising: acknowledging the smallness (sometimes) of craft” (2018) that questions the size of claims we can make about the power of our material world.

lecture 18.30 Monday April 8, 2019 Stockholm, Sweden

All welcome. RSVP: info (AT) konsthantverkarna.se