Extended Record Keeping, 2022-2023

This project is a year-long continuation of the work I previously explored in Record Keeping. This time I explored methods of natural dye processes, modification with mordanting and further more in-depth methods of recording the pieces’ evolution. This piece is materialized through a series of woven cotton strips made from deadstock cotton bedding. 

I use time and energy as a mechanism to increase the work’s value. I want to use the visual record of their lives to highlight and maximize their significance while also questioning our current value systems. Throughout the process I took diligent records of the dyeing process, their results and scanned each colour to memorialize its existence. As a final act of erasure the piece’s weaving ends are dipped into a dye mix, that reaches upwards slowly ‘destroying’/covering/erasing the ‘work’ and investment This “destruction” occurred during my month-long graduating exhibition in April of 2023 at Art Mur in Montreal.

When engaging with textiles and dye on a creative level it’s unavoidable to be confronted with the amount of investment textile production and manufacturing requires. Textile industry outsourcing has created a poisonous culture of unsustainable over-consumption and pollution from an environmental and ethical standpoint. Pollution from dyes, microplastics invading our water systems, and unethical labour practices have all congregated in this industry in order to supply poorly constructed garments based on transient trends. Because of outsourcing, the information and destructive realities that come with it are both unknowable and easily ignored. Our mechanisms for making and morals in consumption are eschewed and unsustainable, which I want to highlight, comment on and criticize.