Pins and Palimpsests

38cm x 38cm x 17cm

 

Description

Dark wooden sewing box, pink satin lining. Pin patterns on inside lid. Contains nine textile text pieces (‘Effi’s letters’).

 

 

Themes, Comments and Storylines

At the heart of In Theodor Fontane’s novel “Effie Briest” (1895) is a sewing box. When in Effie’s absence her young daughter hurts herself, the servants in search of a bandage break Effie’s sewing box open; among the strewn-about contents is a bundle of letters, written to her, many years ago, by her lover whom she renounced in favour of her husband. The discovery of the letters determines Effie’s fate; she loses her husband, her home, her daughter and, eventually her life.

 

The sewing box as an intimate hiding place. Stories and memories of the past inscribed into the fabric of life. Narrative textile metaphors. Correspondences of many kinds.

 

Pins

 

"When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I've always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair the damage. It is never aggressive, it's not a pin." (Bourgois1998:222)

 

Bourgeois, Louise (1998), Destruction of the Father, Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923 – 1997, edited and with texts by Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Violette Editions, London 1998

 

 

The needle is sharp like a pin but of ampler uses, as what is pinned into place lacks the permanence of what has been stitched together. Yet pinning can be as conducive to the “sharing of tales, secrets, thoughts and memories” as stitching, Kirsty Hall noticed when working on Pin Ritual (2001). Working on an idea to stick pins into a translucent piece of fabric that might be too delicate to hold their weight the process became performance rather the creation of a sculpture as originally planned, when she realized that the act of pinning itself created a safe place for people to talk in.

 

Pins, like needles, can be dangerous tools, or instruments or magic and transformation, or just very useful to hold things in place, to pin things down, be that straps or buttons.

 

 

Music No Distance from Details in a bigger picture (2008) 
by On Purpose, with kind permission

www.myspace.com/onpurposeband