The scope of the project is to use photographs and interviews as source material for embroidery pieces that will convey the conversations taking place between the different sectors of society; government (stitch point), people (Thread), violence (registration of the stitch). The research provides source material for my current project in embroidery titled Conversations in Violence.
Research Study (manta)
2015
Unbleached Muslin, polyester thread, cotton
Sample of composition, this is one of the many messages that violent groups leave one another throughout the city on an almost daily basis. The opposing faction then perpetuates the conversation by returning the act in kind. These messages are always accompanied by a memento; the body(ies) of fellow criminals.
Detail 1
Detail 2
More importantly, this is a critique of the dialogue taking place between the perpetrators of this violence in the societies involved.
Research Study 3 (Monument)
2015
Unbleached Muslin, polyester thread, cotton, wire
Monuments, like the thread in this study, tend to just weather away in the city. By having conversations with the associations involved in campaigning for these victims, I will bring narrative to a work that is otherwise alien to us. I will use these techniques and methods of conversation to help those affected provide their counter arguments to the conversations in violence that are taking place day in and day out in the city.
Research Sample 5
Research Sample 6
Research Samples 2 & 3
The outcome is a body of work through which embroidery is a metaphor for the social thread of the people, its surfaces are the world; and the interfacing of the fibers are the government's loss of control over its people.
Research Study 2 (muerta)
2015
Unbleached Muslin, polyester thread, cotton
So obscured is the spread of information in such a violent city that even the deaths of those involved are often times assigned a number and lumped into larger cases, thus never becoming identified on their own. This study enacts the disjoint between the victims, the society and the protectors (government) by showcasing the protected and muddled views we get of the treatment of victims and those supposed to bring justice to them.
Research Study 4 (Apprehended)
2015
Unbleached Muslin, polyester thread, cotton, wire
These conversations in violence also surround those that have been driven by need and lack of resources into crime. Often times the criminals are poorer than those they attack, rape and kill. One of the associations I will work with has been set up to help those in fringe communities (the most exposed and vulnerable to crime) to provide them with trade tools and training to deter them from crime. I will interview these volunteers and participants to record and document their impressions and responses to the state the thread of their society is in.