QUILTS WITH A MESSAGE: WHEN FABRIC BECOMES PROTEST

As quilters, we often think of fabric as a source of comfort—soft, colourful and deeply tied to tradition. Fabric can also be a powerful voice. For me, quilting has become more than just a creative outlet; it’s a way to express my concerns about the world we live in and to protest quietly, yet firmly, with needle, thread and fabric.

Quite a number of my recent works grew from my frustration with the neglect of our water sources. Rivers and dams—once places of life and beauty—are polluted, yet very little is being done to restore them. Low lying swampy areas are being used as areas to build low cost housing and schools on. This destroys the habitat of so many animals and birds and it changes the ecosystem of that place completely! Factories dump toxic waste into rivers and all of this run off into the ocean where it creates havoc with the coral reefs and ocean life.

Using repurposed felt and couching black yarn onto black backgrounds, I created artworks that speak of loss, neglect and the danger of ignoring what sustains us. It isn’t “pretty” in the traditional sense, but it is honest.

This is not the only time I’ve used fabric as protest. Exodus forces viewers to face the ongoing displacement of people across Europe and beyond—an uncomfortable topic but one that needed to be embroidered, burnt and quilted!

In Violence Against Women, I confronted an issue that is painfully close to home for many, yet often hidden behind closed doors. Here I not only addressed violence against women but also against children and gender-based violence. The colours on this work speak of the levels of injuries that victims get. Sometimes these are light and almost invisible injuries but as the eye moves to the right of the work, the colour deepens until on the furthest right side, there is only black…this is when death occurs.

An Inconvenient Truth speaks for itself. The earth seems to melt into a pile of waste at the bottom of the quilt. Very uncomfortable to look at but so true! This is about the destruction caused by human hands to the very world we depend on, while Below the Surface became my protest against fracking in the Karoo. There is the ongoing threat of fracking in areas that are not as densely populated in the rush to get as much financial gain possible by literally raping the country!

Then there is the quilt that brought viewers to tears once they realised what I expressed by ripping fabrics apart and superimposing these onto the continents and islands of our world. Huge islands of plastic waste float in the oceans, killing sea creatures from the smallest to the largest. Today, with the help of the internet, anyone can look up Floating Plastic Islands and see exactly what I mean!

Each of these quilts carries weight and none of them are easy. They’re not designed to soothe but to disturb, provoke thought and hopefully spark conversation.

Art has the power to hold a mirror to society. Just as painters or poets express protest, we as textile artists can stitch our concerns into cloth. Each layer and each thread becomes part of the story. When viewers stop in front of such a quilt, they may first see texture and design—but if they pause long enough, they’ll also sense the message woven into the work.

Quilting gives me a way to speak when words feel too small. It may not change the world overnight but it reminds me—and hopefully others—that we cannot remain silent. Fabric has memory and when we stitch with intention, we leave a legacy of both beauty and truth.

I know this is a very depressing blog but it’s definitely thought provoking! Happy stitching until next month!