New Annual Art Show for the Politically Conscious: Healing Fibers casts on in 2014 with the first exhibit, “Violence against Women”
Worcester area artists took action against the world’s most pervasive injustice, “Violence against Women,” at the first Healing Fibers show, held this year in October at Worcester’s Sprinkler Factory gallery. The artists answered the open call to enter works that were both relevant to the topic and integrated fiber from fabrics. In an impressive display of 2- and 3D art, ten artists took part in the 2014 Healing Fibers show, which began a series of shows planned for early autumn each year that will take on complex socio-political themes, for example “War and Peace” in November 2015, to be held again at Sprinkler Factory.
Healing Fibers was conceived and launched by artist Bayda Asbridge, whose own woven works in the show included, among others, such startling pieces as a long, draping tapestry river, a tribute to her mother which also refers to the hardships faced by all parents who sacrifice for their children, or a ball and chain made of soft, pliable felt and attached to a hard metal ring, a reminder of the fragility of the victim held in bondage, servitude, and enslavement.
Despite the gravity of the topic, the show was anything but somber. An animated party was held at the afternoon opening on October 5th, and visitors were treated to live music and professional dance celebrating the female body, from flamenco to ballroom to contemporary to belly dancing (Asbridge, an expert belly dancer, performed stunning dances to the theme). Delectable treats and drinks brought by the artists and friends provided the proverbial icing on the cake in an atmosphere lively with conversations and connections. Perhaps the lightness of the opening was partly due to the relief that the socially conscious feel when they can talk openly of their concerns, when they are able to share the weight carried by the affected.
Many conversations about women’s issues started alongside a wall on which three burqas were hung and which visitors were invited to try. Healing Fibers organizer Bayda Asbridge had the burqas imported from Afghanistan, and the many who tried them experienced physically the ways in which movement, visibility, and comfort are obstructed by these coverings, quite the opposite of Western dress, allowing for empathy not only with Afghan women but also with women in real or symbolically similar, degrading conditions.
The year 2014 witnessed some of the worst hate crimes committed against women in the 21st century, from kidnappings of schoolgirls to rapes and murders of women in public places; meanwhile the well-known existing problems continue to worsen in the areas of female enslavement and trafficking, genital mutilation, domestic violence, lack of state support for abuse victims, for women with children (affordable childcare), restrictions of women’s reproductive rights, inequality in the workforce, etc. At the “Violence against Women” opening, a representative from Worcester’s YWCA gave a local picture of how important it is to provide shelter and support for victims of domestic abuse and reintegration after incarceration. Because of the sheer pervasiveness of women’s oppression, the artwork embodied a wide range of positions and statements made by this diverse group of women. (This year, the combination of the gendered theme and the prevalence of women using fiber in art or making fiber art resulted in all women participants, although the show is open to all artists).
As Healing Fibers artist Susan Black states, “Sadly, it’s been easy to find inspiration for creating pieces depicting the many aspects of violence against women as it exists in the world today.” Using symbolically laden everyday objects, such as a red-painted razor blade inserted uncomfortably on a cut-out cardboard nude in the assemblage piece “Female Genital Mutilation,” Black surprises the observer into further contemplation.
Laura Cahalane keenly combines her strong expertise in both fabric art and assemblage with a work thematizing women’s objectification through the capitalist agenda of their commodification: disembodied from a head or torso are legs spread apart, high heels resting on a wavy metal rod. The flesh-colored legs were cut from a LRG-brand printed shirt – fashionable in the hip-hop scene – and stuffed so that the center indeed appears fleshy; the metal bar reappears as a heart-shaped “crown” from which a “Sold” tag is hung.
Traditional painters participated in the show with provoking fabric additions to their works. The result was an added layer of meaning, for example, in UK artist Ann Stoker’s “Veil,” depicting a woman in physical and emotional pain, revealing what women may be hiding “behind the veil.” Her “Veil 2 – The Girl with the Golden Hair,” references the fairy tale figure of Rapunzel as a metaphor for women’s isolation. Abstract painter Patti Kelly foregrounds her use of color to scream out against violence against women. At the same time, her works formally harmonize a warm texture and interwoven effect that speaks to women’s common challenge in countering violence. “The physical and emotional trauma endured by women intersects all social-economic, racial, chronological, religious and national orientations,” Kelly emphasizes.
Traditional fiber artists bring materials together in an integrative process, which metaphorically also stands for collective networking. Weaver Jeri Gillan uses a wide variety of yarns and natural materials such as driftwood to subtly refer to inclusion within the women’s movement. Presenting a technique traditional to Japan is Mihoko Wakabayashi, who also teaches and demonstrates her mastery of the Saori weaving technique, which emphasizes “ancient Zen principles of spontaneity and self discovery.” Artist Ann Hanscom describes how the process of creating her art – weaving and felting – works as a “healing transference” to her creations. This is apparent in a work in which three felted figures are shown in positions reacting to violent acts: a black and a white woman and a child, naked and defenseless, seem as if they could never survive without the nurturing hand of the artist.
With her suit of soft armor, artist Jill Watts criticizes our legacy of knight culture, showing how the hard defensiveness, instead of protecting against vulnerability, in fact serves to cultivate a mutually assured destruction of tenderness. Her “Soft Armor” consists of more than a hundred inscribed stories of the lives of friends and family members, assembled into a full costume that she also wore at the opening. Conceptual artist Charlotte Eckler added an installational work to the mix that made reference to protest culture, especially the 2014 protests in Ferguson, MO, with the title “Hands Up / Don’t Shoot.” Using motifs from protest culture, variously printed onto fabrics, paper, and a t-shirt, and including the actual silkscreens used for the images, she used transparency and opaqueness to thematize trust and the need for covering and subverting the patriarchal system, in her personal negotiation with the political.
In reference to one of the best-known paintings associated with romantic love – Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” – Bayda Asbridge created a spectacularly woven quotation of the art-nouveau masterpiece, yet her lovers’ faces are dubious masks with empty, uncanny expressions. That the statement is made about domestic violence becomes clear in connection with an adjacently placed hospital form that asks, among other questions, “Do you feel unsafe at home?” Another work is placed in such a way that a hand appears to be emerging from a woven mound on the floor, thus also “grabbing” the observer’s attention and generating the questions one asks in response to powerful art.
With her Healing Fibers, Asbridge aims at nothing less than changing the world: “Our hope is that these exhibits can make some change, no matter how large or small, and a shift in the thinking of future generations.”
