Textile Healing – Feminist Resistance Against Sexualized Violence and Femicides Through Activist Art

Abstract

The public display of textile activist art generates visibility and attention. The artworks discussed in this paper are material signs of rebellion against sexualized violence against women/as women read persons and femicides. This article portrays feminist resistance to sexualized violence/femicides through critical crafting, which is (textile) craft-based activist art. This artistic practice makes invisible violence visible; or feminist phrased the private becomes the political. Textile crafting strategies place sexualized relations of violence to which women are exposed in patriarchally organized (industrial) cultures worldwide – that is, in both the global North and the global South – at the center of the discourse. The art-activists analyzed in this article are concerned with triple-binds that arise in the entanglement of racism, sexism and classism. The projects aim to make visible the situation of survivors of sexualized violence and the relatives of murdered women* and generate a sense of self-empowerment through the co-creation of agency for survivors. This paper asks what correlations arise when traditionally feminine textile crafts are charged with issues of sexualized violence and used as a display for gender-political protest in public space. Feminist art-activists from the collective Force: Upsetting Rape Culture take socio-critical positions with their work The Monument Quilt and try to undermine cultural narratives of gender stereotypes and the associated attributions. The Monument Quilt and its Mexican partner project La Casa Mandarina are textile mouthpieces, as they reflect a huge accumulation of voices in public space. This visual plurality combined with the signal color red of the individual textile parts acts as a metaphor for subjects who (re)conquer urban space loudly and clearly qua screaming red.

Keywords:

• Affect studies
• sexual violence
• art activism
• femicides
• textile healing

Notes

1 Following the German convention of “das Gendersternchen”, I will use as asterisk after mention of women* to denote gender-inclusive language referring to all marginalized groups encompassed within this term.

2 To visualize my affective connections to the subject, e.g. through intense fieldwork, I use the first person narrative.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Held

Sarah Held works as a Post Doc at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is a lecturer for Fashion/Gender Studies at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz. Besides her primary research focus, her interests are body, gender and material culture of queer-feminist pornography. She co-initiated the performance art collective “Aufstand der Schwestern” which intervenes against femicides. Recent publications: Zur Materialität des feministischen Widerstands. Textile Agency gegen sexuaisierte Gewalt und Femicides, Metzler 2021 [On the Materiality of Feminist Resistance. Textile Agency against Sexualized Violence and Femicides]; Rechte angriffe – toxische effekte. Umformierungen extrem Rechter in Mode, Feminismus und Popkultur (Transcript 2021) [Right-wing attacks – toxic effects. Transformations of the Extreme Right in Fashion, Feminism, and Pop Culture. Ed. with Elke Gaugele]. [email protected]