textiles as metaphors for care
This perspective is inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s (2021; originally published 1986) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, in which she reimagines the primary human tool not as the heroic spear but as a container - the carrier bag, the basket, the vessel that gathers, holds and sustains. Le Guin’s essay offers a re-reading of dominant narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of storytelling. In the same way, I position garments - and the labour that creates them - as carrier bags of the maker’s narrative. If emotional imprints are transmitted through labour and embedded in artefacts (the objectification of labour), then labour itself becomes the carrier bag: a vessel for energy, intention and care. In this light, textiles emerge as metaphors for a different kind of narrative - one that centres human connection, gestures, labour and the accumulation of stories that resist erasure
These thoughts on how non-verbal archives can resist commodification and highlight the artefacts’ origin in labour are expressed more explicitly in one particular workshop exercise. For this activity, I invite participants to try their embroidery skills on a small denim swatch. The skill level here is secondary; the exercise is designed as a first encounter with handwork, focusing on intuitive interaction with needle and thread rather than technical mastery. I introduce this exercise at the very beginning of each session, before much verbal communication has taken place, to capture participants’ instinctive responses to the tools and materials. In this way, I am asking participants to imprint their tacit, embodied knowledge onto the denim swatch - leaving behind a trace of their presence, mood and gesture. These swatches are then collected and hand-sewn onto a larger tapestry, building a non-verbal archive of the workshops and illustrating the participants' entanglement through this simple 15-minute task. By keeping the exercise brief, I aim to show how easily one can leave an imprint on an artefact - one that captures a moment of the body's emotional state. This, in turn, however small, is a reminder that we are always consuming and interacting with the imprints and identities of others - of makers past and present. Through these kinds of exercises, the workshop itself becomes a method for illuminating the imprints left by performing labour. The swatches stand as quiet acts of refusal: they honour the complexity and agency of
These thoughts on how non-verbal archives can resist commodification and highlight the artefacts’ origin in labour are expressed more explicitly in one particular workshop exercise. For this activity, I invite participants to try their embroidery skills on a small denim swatch. The skill level here is secondary; the exercise is designed as a first encounter with handwork, focusing on intuitive interaction with needle and thread rather than technical mastery. I introduce this exercise at the very beginning of each session, before much verbal communication has taken place, to capture participants’ instinctive responses to the tools and materials. In this way, I am asking participants to imprint their tacit, embodied knowledge onto the denim swatch - leaving behind a trace of their presence, mood and gesture. These swatches are then collected and hand-sewn onto a larger tapestry, building a non-verbal archive of the workshops and illustrating the participants' entanglement through this simple 15-minute task. By keeping the exercise brief, I aim to show how easily one can leave an imprint on an artefact - one that captures a moment of the body's emotional state. This, in turn, however small, is a reminder that we are always consuming and interacting with the imprints and identities of others - of makers past and present. Through these kinds of exercises, the workshop itself becomes a method for illuminating the imprints left by performing labour. The swatches stand as quiet acts of refusal: they honour the complexity and agency of