This performance is part of our annual Performance Art Week (PAW), in its twelfth edition in 2024. For more information on PAW, click here.

Artist Statement

The current thrust of my performance work aligns fiber arts with contending with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and intimate partner violence- diversifying the definition of the term, ‘women’s work.’  The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one in three women have suffered as victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) (WHO 2021). These staggering statistics demand recalibrating the definition of ‘women’s work’ to include dealing with IPV in all its forms. The term is commonly used in reference to the unpaid labor that a woman performs within the home – housekeeping, child rearing and, domestic arts such as sewing, knitting, crochet and other craft activities. 

The delineation of ‘women’s work’ is a patriarchal and capitalist concept meant to maintain men’s superiority over women. This division of labor undervalues domestic labor typically performed by women, enforces lower wages for women (often for equivalent responsibility) and in turn encourages dependence on their partner. However, ‘patriarchy readily accommodates some women into positions of power, provided that the women are male-identified, male-centered and act according to patriarchal values’ (Becker 1999). Ultimately, the sexual division of labor between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ responsibilities equates tasks with value, the ‘feminine’ considered of low value.

Therefore, as women contend with violence in their homes and suffer often without repercussions, as a culture we also undervalue their healing.  The work I am looking to present is entitled “to my small hearth, his fire came” and centers on several representations of fiber arts (quilting and crochet) as embodied objects of ongoing labor, ‘women’s work.”  This labor includes the contention of “triggers” that unravel years of trauma mitigation, suggesting the non-linear process of healing.

References

Becker, Mary (1999) "‘Patriarchy and inequality: Towards a Substantive Feminism’," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1999: Iss. 1(, Article 3). accessed 19 Nov. 2023.

Comanne, Denise [CADTM (2020)]. ‘How Patriarchy and capitalism combine to Aggravate the Oppression of Women’, – CADTM,. https://www.cadtm.org/How-Patriarchy-and-Capitalism-Combine-to-Aggravate-the-Oppression-of-Women,. accessed 19 Nov. 2023.

World Health Organization (WHO) (2021) ‘Violence against women’,www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women, 1 March, accessed 8 May 2023.