WORKING TITLE: “Survival Memories: How representing and naming incest survival could challenge taboos, influence public discourse and ideologies, and contribute to social change through the history and tenacity of textiles”
My practice-led PhD explores how abuse survivors can influence public and political discourse through art, embodiment, and materiality. My work reflects on my experience and challenges both assumptions of safety found in domestic spaces and art forms, along with patriarchal policy rhetoric. Survivor-led activist fine art, that focusses on art and message rather than therapeutic outcomes, is crucial if we are going to genuinely engage in a feminist public pedagogy that can bring forward open forms of togetherness. Discussions of gender-based trauma and sexual abuse are in the public consciousness; however, incest is often omitted. As one of society’s last taboos few survivors disclose or receive support, leading to significant human and social costs, highlighting the need for systemic change and research. I have firsthand experience as a survivor of parental incest. My research provides a much-needed interrogation of depictions of incest and will contribute to feminist voices around gender-based violence and childhood sexual abuse. Textiles can be a vehicle for remembering, memorialising, and agitating, while new materialism removes the hierarchy between artists and materials. Generations of women have utilised textiles as a medium for remembering, storytelling, domestic decoration and renegade changemaking. My artistic interventions concern domestic scenes and the contradictions around home, sites of safety and comfort for many, but loci of abuse for others. Distorted images and traditional motifs, accompanied by childhood photographs, absent memories and text are captured in my textile works, evoking the tradition of embroidery samplers and quilts.
Photographer: David Bailey Photography https://www.davidbaileyphotography.com (funded by Creative City Ballarat)
