We Exist in Our Mother the Moment She is Born
[2023]
[WE EXIST IN OUR MOTHER THE MOMENT SHE IS BORN]
[Textile and Graphic Narrative / Honors Project]
[2023] [WE EXIST IN OUR MOTHER THE MOMENT SHE IS BORN] [Textile and Graphic Narrative / Honors Project]
A granddaughter and daughter, artist Maurin Stubbs works to transform generational connections into material representations. This process is a project of archiving her matrilineal relationships as they exist. Maurin takes images of herself and her female family members at a similar age and pixelates them into a quilting pattern which she then sews from recovered textiles such as placements and sheets.
The existence of these objects in the traditional domestic sphere propels forward her desire for a bond to her matrilineal line, both living and deceased.
Maurin then embroiders organic portraits of the women overtop their pixelated form, bringing together their rigid form and her emotional perception of them. The act of creating has become a way of spending time with those she depicts. For Maurin, process is intimately connected to her aim to make these bonds material and memorialized. The draping thread of red connecting the three portraits in this series–of grandmother, mother, and self, respectively–brings to mind the image of both heart and womb, emphasizing the reminder that: We exist in our Mothers the moment they are Born.
How does a medium inform a narrative?
[CRAFTING AN ARCHIVE OF FEELING]
How does a medium inform a narrative? [CRAFTING AN ARCHIVE OF FEELING]
How does a medium inform a narrative? In my work I hope to explore how the addition of textile as medium adds an inferred intertextuality about that which it creates. The feminine experience has long been tied to ‘woman's work,’ a reminder I see in the spinning wheel passed down to me through my maternal grandmother. As a way of sitting with her and my mother, I plan to create three textile works, with two offering a likeness to each of them respectively, and one to myself, with the intensity of the relationship being offered through the clarity of imagery with which they are made of.
