| art.description.project | The opportunity to exhibit my ongoing Infant Wrapping Cloth project in the Research Pavilion, hosted by the University of the Arts, Helsinki in Venice, summer of 2019, provided an opportunity to reflect on the project in a context explicitly framed as ‘research’. In contrast to my solo retrospective exhibition at the Borås Textile Museum in the autumn of 2019 which charted twenty-five years of my own artistic practice, at the Venice Research Pavilion the Infant Wrapping Cloths were presented as both applied and artistic research. It was useful to be reminded of how unusual the hybrid identity of the Infant Wrapping Cloth is: artistic research because my practice is governed by aesthetic and material decisions at the loom, but also applied research when the wrapping cloths move into the hospital context for use at the discretion of midwives working with families who are experiencing stillbirths, late term abortions and miscarriages.
On reflection the challenge in any exhibition context is to bring both aspects of this research inquiry into the light equally. Unlike other topics of that might be seen in applied research, almost all visual documentation of the blankets use in hospitals would be entirely inappropriate to record let alone share. Instead narrative is required to convey the blanket-in-use which remains beyond the exhibition visitor's sight.
For me, exhibiting the blankets, is experiencing a stage in between two very active phases of the research process – in between the weaving and in between the ritual use at hospitals. The infant shrouds are often displayed as artefacts inviting the viewer to touch and understand the material qualities of the cloth, this was also the case in Venice. And it that way, they can become active for the visitor through their tactile presence.
In Dec 18, when reflecting on the challenges of this research in a dialogue seminar with professor Jessica Hemmings (How Do You Footnote a Smile? One Dialog about Two Extremes of Textile Research, later published in Textile: the journal of cloth & culture) I shared some thoughts about the visibility of the blankets in an exhibition setting. My main reason for exposing them is that I, through their presence, can argue for the importance of textile actions in relation to death. They are temporary and” quietly” exposed folded, stored in piles, but they are aimed for holding, wrapping and shrouding a dead body.
While this crucial aspect of the project can only be suggested in the exhibition space, participation in the Research Pavilion also showed me that a material presence has become unusual amongst the concept driven agendas of many of my co-exhibitors. The artistic and applied components of this research remain a balance that I will continue to explore in future.
In the Research Pavilion 2019 six different research cells were exposed and the Infant Wrapping Cloth project were part of the Cemetery Archipelago cell, organized by professor Mick Wilson. The number of blankets to be shown were discussed. From the original thought about a textile sample to accompany a poster explaining the project, we ended up by exposing more than 50 blankets.
Why doing so?
The material - even if in this case the research function can only be partially shown - remains an important research method and value to claim. The amount says something about a numerous need but also the need of materiality in an exhibition largely exposed by informational posters.
These 50 blankets are, after their stay in Venice, now being transferred to clinical departments at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg. They wear traces of strong Venice summer light, the sun has bleached the textile in the outer folding. But soon there will be other traces and eventually a child will be cremated in its shroud.
Exposing the blankets is also about reflections of temporal existence.
Link to the research on-line catalogue for Cemetery Archpelago:
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/474888/507480
Link to article in the Textile Cloth Journal: How Do You Footnote a Smile? One Dialog about Two Extremes of Textile Research
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2019.1616460 | sv |
