The Enchanted Loom: Weaving identities through collaborative memory

 I created embroidery work as part of a partnership with neuroscientist Mahdieh Varvani Farahani. Ultimately, our collaboration resulted in a new media piece that conveys the vulnerable but resilient nature of autobiographical memory by weaving a snapshot in time, Asa's birth story as told by her parents. The video shows the embroidery process used to create this image. Its creation involves layering thread, back and forth repetitively and snipping layers to create a fuzzy texture, both an illustration of iterative memory and a physical ode to fibre tractography imaging. An audio element weaves together mine, and my partner's telling our respective stories, cut and strung together to create a collaborative memory.

I had intended to simply exhibit this process-based video. It showed the creation of a tidy portrait. But, one day, Asa crawled beneath my worktable and saw this reverse image of herself and pointed it out to me. On its own, this messy and tangled image of my child conveys much more effectively the entangled making of ourselves; mother, daughter, father, that comes from speaking our shared memories.