Sophie Squires
Page 1: Locked Letters
Page 2: Women’s Text(tiles)
Page 3: Embroidering History
Page 4: Statement
My practice has been one of historiography. Working to communicate women’s material cultures and textual history. Bringing to the fore how women have not only survived or even bought into their subjugation but transcended, transgressed, thrived and created in spite of it. And the active and passive censorship, the manipulation of history of women to hide their power, freedoms and voices. Twisting those who utilised them into monsters.
For my final piece I used embroidery to create work that would disrupt the narratives “of the ways things always were” of the preconception of acquiesce and women’s work. Using the craft in the grandiose size of tapestry to impose my thesis, these women in minds and space. Drawing visual comparison of the Bayeux tapestry evoking its historicity and narratology. Giving that space and focus to all of women’s textualities to the word written and sewn and visualized presenting an equality by their combination and inclusion asking the viewer to revise their idea of what constitutes history and who gets written into. Presenting women and their visual and written texts who railed against patriarchy, who defeated icons of western masculinity, who break the imposed silence of historical working-class women, who engaged in women's pedagogy. Using the formats of samplers which forms one of the largest extant bodies of women’s text, material culture and pedagogy the threads of which all form the basis of my work.
My work which has been greatly influenced by the feminist art movement triumphs and failures. The development of Feminist Art from awareness and assertion with Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party highlighting women’s place and existence to phase of direct correction and textual intervention with Elaine Reichek re-appropriation of the visual language of American embroidery samplers to question how the scenes they present and the associations hold as part of the romanticisation of colonial history and the real women hidden beneath. This type of work using historical women’s material culture to make bold intervention into received narratives struck me powerfully but, they stop too short. Dinner Party reveals nothing of why we should care about them other than historicity and Chicago thinks you should. Reickeh falls into the trap of too often repeating men’s bile leaving the work to challenge and subvert but not replace old narratives. The dearth of diversity especially of women of colour is in my view unacceptable. So I have made an effort to make this a survey from class, gender, and locality/race challenging the white washing of women's history reanimating their voices and subjectivity by including their textualities.
I have employed a praxis of challenging and creating new narratives inspired by decolonial critique of history and its presentation which has continually pushed the bounds of institutional critique. Looking at Hew Locke’s exhibition at the British Museum. Locke has made a direct intervention into their collection not only in his recontextualising information and the groupings of objects but, by presenting the items in vitrines that are in fact transportation crates which along with The Watchers sculptures presented observing us from above the crates minding how we interact with the history. Using the museum format to question not just the information or objects presented to us but how Locke challenges the form by presenting it through his own subjectivity of written and spoken voice subverting the cold authority used to present information in museums.
Locke inspired me to reexamine the subjectivity of histories presentation in my own praxis and the voice I use in it which could be just another “voice of authority”. Leading to my choice to add my subjectivity to the recreation of my chosen texts with colour, material and imagery, guiding the viewer along the work. As I did with Jane Anger, recreating her title page using period blackwork embroidery, using quotes I felt still viscerally resonated today with polemicism. Which I visualized recreating a 1650 unfinished embroidery depicting Judith with Abra decapitating Holofernes. Dropping the stitches of Holofernes blood onto Aristotle’s quote juxtaposed to Angers's quote bemoaning ancient authors' writing on women and its continued use as justification. Locke's use of aberrant means of exhibition display influenced my use of a standing embroidery frame to evoke a museum information stand. Whilst also placing me the creator, and my subjectivity into the space as well as placing the tapestries very present tense means of production and its knowledge into that space too Acknowledging that this work’s unfinished because it can’t be, there are too many people, too many sources I didn't find, read or are lost to time and censor.