I (don't) care too much - Fibreart for International Women’s Day

in NeedleWorkMonday3 years ago

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For this years international women’s day during a worldwide pandemic I have chosen not to celebrate the successes of the collaborate effort of women which came before me, I have chosen to point out one part of (several) still existing injustices in women’s life: unpaid care work.
I found this important to point out – this is no scientific hypothesis only my subjective opinion – that I notice a kind of backlash which shifts more responsibility on women’s shoulders, but a responsibility without positive acknowledgement. Care work is heavily resting on women during this time of pandemic. So, I tried to create two garments which make this injustice and its costs for women visible.

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The blouse: Tear me down or fly alone

This blouse represents the imbalance in opinions shown towards woman: too thin or too fat, too clever, or too stupid, too emotional, or too cold, too motherly, too businesslike – everything is up to critical evaluation. Everyone sports an opinion about behaviour and looks. And these opinions are tearing on me. They pull me in one direction and someday I may stumble (if I not unclothe myself from societies - or better sexism’s preconceptions about womanhood)
But there is also internal/ internalised imbalance. The too much of feeling and caring. The fear of letting loved ones down, the wish to please everybody, to give everyone a happy live, ease their sadness or hurt. The fear of being unjust or impolite, to be inattentive or even neglect others needs.

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And on the other side the will to fight for my opinion, fight too much, too harsh without the desire to negotiate for winning. Presenting facts as if they are self explanatory, as if … This is the light side of imbalance. Nobody is there to hold me (down). This is the cold side, no (false) love keeping me warm.

The skirt: I don’t care/too much/holes

There are big chunks of myself missing. I gave my heart away, part of my thigh and a bit of my soul.

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This is the skirt with holes, the embodiment of “care work”. Unpaid (emotional) labour which is biting chunks out of women’s life’s and body’s all over the world. During pandemic times this became even more obvious as the centre of people’s life is suddenly more private, and governments pushes responsibility towards the family and so ultimately on the woman/mother. Nothing bad with the family being your centre of life… if you have chosen it. Not so nice: a society which on the one hand implicitly expect of women to care for their elderly parents, to care for their children, to hold contact to friends, to be the social glue, the support system and on the other hand devalue exactly this kind of work. And this devaluation is not always easy to spot. It may be easy to notice that jobs done mostly by women, like preschool teacher, geriatric nurses, nurses in general, shop assistants and and and are payed less as a whole (not to speak of the gender pay gap). Less easy to spot is that many aspects of care work never register as work at all. In many relationships it is still deemed “normal”, kind of laws of nature “normal” that the female part goes shopping, cooks, educates or if the male part wants to help, the woman has to coordinate his help… and so she again is ultimately responsible for everybody’s wellbeing.

What I did – the creative and crafty process

For the blouse I have chosen a plain pattern, something which had the feel of a blank canvas for me: the Fibremood Suri Top. This is a top which consist only of a front and back part, no inserted sleeves at all. I made a very short version of this top and inserted a big irregular gusset beneath the right armpit to give the top an “imbalanced” (see explanation above) width and drape. To enhance this imbalance, I afterwards sewed on a ruffle at the hem. This ruffle has varying length; the longest part I arranged at the side-wedge, the shortest exactly at the opposite side.

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The skirt I made with a pattern of Simone Rocha. I loved her idea of a garment which is both hiding and revealing at the same time. Which has it “reveals” at random places and so for me creates fewer erotic images but speaks more of hurtful exposure? For this reason I decided to leave the “holes” wide open. These “holes” are made by long stripes of fabric which have a gathered part (the bottom one) and a wider non gathered (the upper one). After gathering the “hole” is bind with self-made bias tape. To be honest, this was fiddly for me :-D

For the fabric I have chosen a light beige cotton which reminds me of a medieval cilice (Büßergewand… robe of repentance I would translate). A fabric which in my eye’s hints to an underlying sin, but also represents the already purified sinner. A fabric which is bland and does not mirror the wearers personality.
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The red crochet chains are like blood traces, which speak of the emotional and physical draining of women. Traces which visualize the social connection women hold up in our society… traces of strain, crime, and sex.

Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @muscara and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community.

Ohhh, if you don't have a hive account and want to comment then visit my Wordpressblog Bliss and Blisters and write me there.

Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva.

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This was such a deep thought provoking display of how you see these injustices of women particularly those in the care fields. I love the creativity and the way you transformed the garments to convey all of the different things women go through emotionally and socially.

I love seeing you put all of the different arts you love together into this one piece (your posing/acting creative style mixed in with needle art).

Thank you for joining the challenge ~ ♥️

 3 years ago  

I am glad we had this challenge as I find it important that we (and it seems "we" are mostly women on needleworkmonday) have the opportunity to show all our different realities: our strength and the positive, the normality but also things which could be improved. For example I am absolutely sure that all of my friends who have children would love to learn from your home schooling expertise... But here is not much networking between women (sadly). So I find it really great we are doing it online, the learning from one another, the support and simply recognising the divers life experiences.

And completely selfish... I am proud that I was able to sew the zipper in without destroying the skirt :-DDDD

I absolutely agree with you! I am very happy for these opportunities to connect and support each other online.

I’m happy you were able to as well ~ 😃

Wow! I love your thought-provoking piece and heavy topic of discussion.
Hurtful exposure can also be hurtful exploitation.
So true. Society often undervalue and undermine truly priceless work.
Happy International Women's Day 2021!

 3 years ago  

THank you for this lovely comment and I hope you are well an up and could have a nice women's day. And I am fully with you, it is still not a topic for easy conversation when talking about I injustice between women and me (or other forms of discriminations). I am always amazed to still find people in my near environment who complete deny that there is any injustice at all... very strange in my eyes...

Happy woman's day to you, I like the spontaneity you convey in your posts. You show us crude reality with your words, you invite us to reflect. I like how the blouse turned out. Greetings

 3 years ago  

Thank you for your lovely wishes <3 I also hope you had a great day on Monday. And it is nice to hear the post and the garments invited you to think. But I also believe that every women has her very own expirience and feelings toward this topics and meaty cultures are also a bit different ... so I hope it was not too weird or alien what I was thinking :-D
ANd thank you for the compliment for the blouse <3

I have been impressed with your expression through this textile art, I think it is hard to be a woman under the circumstances of oppression that are on the shoulders, the pendemic has made even more visible the underlying problems that we have not been able to solve as a society, there are many Right now social injustice with women and the hand of women has decreased due to the pandemic women stay at home, every day there are more femicides that go unpunished and it is a long cloth to cut, I think that being conscious as women The importance of these issues brings us closer to the fight for rights. A hug sister!

 3 years ago  

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment and lovely compliment. And yes, there is a lot to fight for especially in these times. It is hopeful to see that a lot of accomplishments already have taken place, but it is still a lot to do (in German there is a saying "there is air above" means there is still a lot of room for improvement :-D) Many active women I fear are tempted to go completly private and give up on fighting, because of corona.
I hate to hear of the insecure enviroment for women in your country.
Sending you hugs back <3

So interesting to hear your thoughts and see the completed artwork.

 3 years ago  

Thank you for your kind words. I also find it always interesting to read about different views about the world and also about differences (or similarities) which may arouse because we all live in different countries.
I hope you had a nice day on Monday :-)