Master's thesis | Textile practice as embodied theory
Title: NOBODY EXHIBITS - Textile sculptures, serendipity and theory as embodied practice
In my artistic master thesis I explore textile materials - especially selvages - as a medium of embodied knowledge and feminist theory. Based on a relational, process-oriented approach, I develop sculptures and installative arrangements that negotiate questions of identity, body, memory and belonging.
At the center are two sculptural works, so-called NOBODYs, which are made from kilometer-long selvages. These are created in an intensive process of layering and overlapping, whereby the construction is stabilized by the material itself. Color changes and breaks in the fabric symbolize biographical transitions - inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa's concepts of Nepantla and Borderlands.
My practice understands textile work as an epistemic method in which intuition, serendipity and resistance of the material become productive. It refers to theories by Evelyn Fox Keller, Adrian Piper and Anzaldúa, among others - not illustratively, but as a performative ontology. Textile gesture and theory intertwine to create an open, hybrid space of knowledge that makes both collective and personal knowledge visible.
The work encourages us to understand transitional spaces as independent spaces of appropriation, reinterpretation and agency. It asks: How can these spaces be taken up with self-confidence, reinterpreted with self-empowerment and rethought as places of relational knowledge, resistance and care?