After a hiatus, (exploring sculpture in graduate school) I am finally working again in the medium that I love best: hair embroidery. I am in the process of rethinking the format that I used from the 1998 to 2005, however. The abstract, schematic works seem too cool and analytical for me now, and I want to find a more direct and personal way of processing the travesty that is the war in Iraq. Looking at Goya's depictions of the horrors of the Peninsular War in the early 19th century alongside the graphic photos of the carnage in Iraq on the internet, I see uncanny parallels. I have started to make my own "mourning pictures" by sewing the hair into drawings based on Goya's etchings. I chose fragments of antique linen tablecloths as a support, which contrast the rather gritty images which I embroider on them, at the same time as they echo the genteel Victorian era in which hairwork was so popular .
The sewing of the hair is extremely slow and painstaking; I have to find a way to speed things up. I am posting my progress as a way of spurring myself on to work a bit faster!
1 comment:
Great stuff. I commented on this work on the other blog, sorry. See that comment, under other earlier works...
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