Crafting Identities: Folding and stitching the self

Abstract

This article tells the story of two fibre artists, Kathryn and Clare, who craft their intergenerational autoethnographic insights through the creation of textile artworks. It explores the collaborative journey of both artists, who came together to create an exhibition titled “Stitching Identities.” The artists have embraced the Deleuzian idea of the folding act in artmaking as a process of continuous and complex revealing of narratives and intuitive insights about self, a bringing of the inside to the outside and into material aesthetic form. It also embeds the writing of a colleague artist/educator, Michelle, who worked with them on the writing of the article and in addition draws on the critical, reflective and philosophical writing of education theorist Inna Semetsky (https://columbia.academia.edu/InnaSemetsky) who wrote the “Stitching Identities” exhibition catalogue essay. Their artmaking is their method, a way of crafting for meaning, a way to research and explore the self and the formation of their current identities.

Keywords

• craft as method
• stitching identities
• new materiality
• folds
• montage method
• Deleuze