Corredo
MFA Thesis Exhibition, 2023
This exhibition is inspired by ideas of lineage and my Italian culture. I have learned that for Italian immigrants and their descendants, textiles represent a marker of identity. Italian women traditionally create a dowry of textiles made to be passed down through generations, called a corredo. I question what makes a contemporary corredo today.
I come from a line of fiber craftswomen on both sides of my family. In the past, embroidered textiles were seen as main sources of primary education and investments for women’s futures. My grandmother sold her corredo to support her and my family’s immigration from southern Italy to the United States. The large water weavings titled, Beginnings and It Was All for Love, represents an exciting and daunting ten-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean and offers the viewer to reflect on their ancestors.
As a weaver for over a decade, I add my woven history to the lineage using new technology. In my newest series, Heirloom Fragments, the weavings marry my grandmother’s embroidery with my own artistic lens. After examining and photographing her textiles, I reconsidered how her designs would look through woven cloth. I weave the newly edited image by hand on a TC2 loom. This tool offers a weaver full control of every thread in their designs. The once small embroidery detail is now a large and brightly colored tapestry. I connect to my ancestors through a woven language practice.
Beginnings to My Biancheria are the textile objects deemed invaluable as heirlooms. I photograph their portraits to digitally archive and honor the textile. The cyanotypes are one-to-one in scale and become a blueprint to my corredo.
Lastly, the sculpture in the gallery functions to display the corredo, rather storing it away. The design is inspired by curiosity cabinets, domestic linen racks, and my own Macomber loom. It offers the viewer to explore time and space between the layers of objects and its curation.
Within the exhibition, I hope the viewer reflects on their own soft textile worlds and considers what would be in their own contemporary corredo.
I come from a line of fiber craftswomen on both sides of my family. In the past, embroidered textiles were seen as main sources of primary education and investments for women’s futures. My grandmother sold her corredo to support her and my family’s immigration from southern Italy to the United States. The large water weavings titled, Beginnings and It Was All for Love, represents an exciting and daunting ten-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean and offers the viewer to reflect on their ancestors.
As a weaver for over a decade, I add my woven history to the lineage using new technology. In my newest series, Heirloom Fragments, the weavings marry my grandmother’s embroidery with my own artistic lens. After examining and photographing her textiles, I reconsidered how her designs would look through woven cloth. I weave the newly edited image by hand on a TC2 loom. This tool offers a weaver full control of every thread in their designs. The once small embroidery detail is now a large and brightly colored tapestry. I connect to my ancestors through a woven language practice.
Beginnings to My Biancheria are the textile objects deemed invaluable as heirlooms. I photograph their portraits to digitally archive and honor the textile. The cyanotypes are one-to-one in scale and become a blueprint to my corredo.
Lastly, the sculpture in the gallery functions to display the corredo, rather storing it away. The design is inspired by curiosity cabinets, domestic linen racks, and my own Macomber loom. It offers the viewer to explore time and space between the layers of objects and its curation.
Within the exhibition, I hope the viewer reflects on their own soft textile worlds and considers what would be in their own contemporary corredo.
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