It Had to Be So
Winner – Open Textile Art Category, 2024
The 2024 brief for the Hand and Lock Prize is ‘Traces of transition: Embroidery that illuminates the layers of our lives.’ It was a brief that I felt compelled to explore.
In 2023, I graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Textiles. During my two years of study, I had researched how the body keeps the score following traumatic loss and the importance of finding words to open conversations that can be hard to have.
Traumatic loss is both unimaginable and unspeakable. It affects every moment of living and every part of our being. In my bravest piece of work to date, I knew that I had to be honest and really say how it had been. How I had survived and how it can still be today.
Following loss through suicide, words can be hidden, and smiles can be made, but without thought or conviction, the body will give it away. Here I sit on a bedsheet, embracing myself with a hug. The spotlight from above shines onto my decaying spine, but it is the unsaid words offered up by an opened bra, lowered jeans and ungroomed hair that offer the hope of living, the hope of being.
Free machine embroidery on water-soluble fabric.
