This piece is in conversation with the Gee’s Bend quilt, which has a strong story of mending through stitching. It started off with the physical need for warmth. The patterns and motifs were drawn from everyday life, like nature (landscapes around: mountains, green fields, rivers, the sun and the sky) and homes (pitched roofs, chimneys, windows and doors). During the Civil Rights movement, in 1966, the Freedom Quilting Bee was established as a way for African-American women to gain economic independence. Each quilt has a story behind it, one of healing, empowerment and community.
Grief is a strange and complex emotion—even stranger than love, believe it or not. It’s an emotion nobody prepares you for, nor is it an expression that is universally the same for everybody. The only common thread is that it feels never-ending and is rather confusing to make sense of. It’s filled with infinite lows and "why me" moments, but somewhere along the way you learn to repair and mend things you never knew needed fixing. You swing from hating the world to being eternally grateful for everything you have had in the past and in the present.
I’ve been told "time will heal" more times than I’d like, but is it really time that heals? For me, it’s been the process of constant introspection: breaking down memories into small pieces and threading it all together to make sense of it; bawling my lungs out at the realizations that surface; learning to accept the incomplete conversations; cherishing old memories and reliving all the good that has been passed down; connecting with people to find bits and pieces of familiarity and wisdom; and bonding with family to thoughtfully grow and rebuild the foundation we stand on. Straightforward, isn’t it?
The base of this work is made of cuts of my mother’s clothes patched together piece by piece. The dark patch on the textile encapsulates the pain you feel and the strength you gain along the way. The ins and outs of the needle on textile is an analogy for the process of grieving. Desperately yearning to turn things back to the way they were before, stitch by stitch. It also represents the journey of realizing it never will be, and the journey of learning to appreciate and accept the new story being woven. This process ultimately led to a moment of realization that the needle of this blank canvas is now in my hands.
Parvati Vijaykumar is a graduate student in Interior Architecture at RISD.