Les Midis du Gresac, un séminaire de Ren Ewart
Tracing Repair: Needlework Mending and Maintenance
Présentation du séminaire
How can histories of needlework mending help us critically engage with topics of craft, repair, and labour? For centuries darning and embroidery samplers have been employed to instruct young women and girls in practices of mending and textile preservation. Initially used as teaching aids by tutors and later preserved in museum archives, in the past decade these artefacts have re-captured the attention of artists, serving as rich sources of thematic and aesthetic influence.
During this seminar I will examine a series of case studies from across the Netherlands, presenting 18th and 19th century Dutch darning samplers against contemporary reinterpretations in installation art practice. Drawing from critical heritage studies and eco-feminist theory, this seminar considers the layered potential of mending: as a technical skill, a creative method, and as a critical framework to better care for things that break.
Discutante : Anne-Sophie Radermecker, co-Directrice du GRESAC - Chargée de cours ULB
BIO
Ren Ewart is a Scottish writer and researcher based in Amsterdam. A PhD candidate at The Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture, their thesis “Tracing Repair: Needlework Mending in and Beyond the Museum” explores issues of maintenance and gendered care-work through the history of textiles. Blending archival research on early needlework samplers with auto-ethnographic and participatory action research in conservation laboratories, artists’ studios, and community workshops, the project asks how a critical understanding of mending can be used to reframe the daily realities of repair in and beyond cultural institutions.
Cycle de séminaires "Les Midis du Gresac"
Inscription souhaitée : marie-line.furst@ulb.be
Lieu : Maison des Arts - ULB | Salle de Projection
3è étage, salle J56.3.303
56 avenue Jeanne, 1050 Bruxelles
12h30 - 14h