The strength of a knitted home: retrieving histories through Janet Morton's wool installations
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Date
2007-08-09T19:10:36Z
Authors
Rothwell, Emily Jane
Keyword
Art , Craft , Social history , Women , Feminism , Artists , Knitting , Architecture , Homeless , Urban cultural geography , Space , Gender
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the ways in which Janet Morton’s installations explore geographic and architectural spatial arrangements, and the ways in which these arrangements reproduce hierarchies of gender, race, and class. As cultural geographers and architectural historians have argued, and as I argue in the context of Morton’s work, architecture and geography exist in a reciprocal relationship with the social context in which they exist. Consequently, social histories that amass in politicized spaces referred to as “home,” such as gendered suburban houses, urban shelters, segregated neighbourhoods, are often marginalized. By discussing the way Morton’s work alludes to marginalized social and spatial histories within home environments, I demonstrate the ways that mainstream understanding of the subordination of marginalized groups is informed by sociospatial histories.