Craft Reclaims Fast Fashion (USA)
Rachel chats about her artwork
The global garment industry is broken. One of the most polluting industries, the way our clothes are made burns fossil fuels at every stage of production. Most garment workers, based primarily in the global south, do not feel safe at work, toiling in dangerous workplaces and experiencing physical violence from supervisors. Workers are exploited, through low wages, lack of overtime and no benefits. Western consumers are a part of this industry, benefitting from easily available cheap clothing, overconsuming and discarding vast amounts of garments, contributing to huge landfills often based in the global south. Where can we find solutions to this unsustainable system? Craft traditions, inherently rooted in ecological processes and based in communities all over the world can teach us how to preserve heritage, honour human rights and innovate ecologically, helping us imagine a viable economic trade system based on economically fair and culturally and environmentally sustainable practices. This work, an assemblage of pieces of used clothing purchased at Goodwill outlets based in the U.S. combined with fabric scraps collected from craft studios throughout India, covered with hand stitches and block printing, suggests that craft and all that it might teach us, could help us “REPAIR” our global garment industry. In undoing seams and re-making connections through sewing, I divert sewing’s original purpose of creating toward social critique. I seek to reveal, viscerally and poetically, how the clothes we wear are a material connection with the workers, around the globe, who make them. I work with used textiles because of their material potency and the way they reference the scale of the many crises caused by capitalism – climate change, racism and labour abuse. My work calls particular attention to the stitch as a mark and symbol of human interdependence. With it, I express my belief in the possibility of repair. – Used clothing parts, scraps collected in India, embroidery floss, printing ink, natural dye. Steel rod Block printing, dyeing, hand stitching. 2.5′ x 1.5′
$800.00
In stock
