Escaped 5

Emotionally connected to Breaking The Silence anthologies from the Women’s Writing Project, I visually transcribed selected women’s essays and poetry. The five embroidered thread sculptures represent stories, secrets or lived experience. Themes arising from the women’s personal stories were: 1.victimhood to self-heroism, 2. lost-self to higher-self (soul journey). I obtained cloth with character from a charity shop to offer it renewed life and selected yarn intuitively.

Making visible lines, and transmitting my energy in the fabric, I used an embroidery ring to highlight each scene. I listened deeply to the textual voice; selecting coloured yarn intuitively, following the motions of the sharp needle through the fabric.

Repetitive action of sewing using both hands, caused bilateral stimulation, continuous tactility of touching the cloth served as a rhythmic state relaxing the autonomic nervous system. Sewing is a tactile, emotional and intuitive process, which aids in finding emotionally abused women’s stolen voices transforming shame into strength, replacing victimhood with [self-heroism]. Sewing lived experiences induces meditative states eliciting organic memories. Ricia Chansky (2010) stated, “The needle is an appropriate agent representing women, balancing both their anger over oppression and pride in their gender” (p.682).