A space in-between whitework and indigo resist: Unravelling cultural dislocation through symbolic cloth

Craven, Mona Mary

A space in-between whitework and indigo resist: Unravelling cultural dislocation through symbolic cloth

Craven, Mona Mary (2024) A space in-between whitework and indigo resist: Unravelling cultural dislocation through symbolic cloth. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts.

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A space in-between whitework and indigo resist: Unravelling cultural dislocation through symbolic cloth (56MB)

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Appendix 4 Viva Exhibition (13MB)

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Creators:

Craven, Mona Mary

Description/Abstract:

This research concentrates on the material histories of a whitework embroidered cloth and an indigo-resist blueprint cloth. The two cloths are rooted in transcultural stitch craft and textile dye traditions and both share a complex heritage originating from the 1850s. The colonisation and decolonisation of India and South Africa influence the reading of these culturally symbolic things.
Three central theoretical positions illuminate the research. Homi Bhabha (1990, 1994) theorises liminal space 'in-between' cultures, in which difference is negotiated to shape new cultural meanings. Cloth culture incorporates a transcultural textile language (Harris, 2015). Textile methods and media form a tangible bridge operating between past and present and across cultures. Doreen Massey's (2005) critique of space emphasises a relationality in places crossing space and time, where collectively multiple events form 'stories-so-far' of place. The two cloths' material histories cross space and time, and these connect places and cultural dislocations. This praxis created a between-meeting point for unravelling both cloths’ stories-so-far in material ways.

The methodology, exhibition as research as theorised by Pierre Bjerregaard (2020), demonstrates research practice and theory set in relation to developing new knowledge. Adapting the model, this practice-based research spatially reframed the two cloths’ material histories by producing room-scaled installations consisting of cloth, stitch, light, and drawing. Presented as encounters with cloth at exhibition events, both cloths were set in dialogue with places and spaces.
Unravelling two cloths’ stories in a south-thinking praxis metaphorically and materially connected threads between cloth, cultural tissue and dislocation. Intersecting praxis methods progressed interpretations of a connective ambiguity, thereby revealing a discomfort between cloth and cultural tissue. This research set conditions for encountering revised stories-so-far of cloth as installations in in-between spaces; as a result a newly south-made blue-and-white thread is pinned into the local southern England landscape.

Item Type:

Thesis

Date:

July 2024

Depositing User:

Lisa Moore

Date Deposited:

27 Oct 2025 10:49

Last Modified:

29 Oct 2025 15:35

Craven, Mona Mary

URI:

https://research.uca.ac.uk/id/eprint/6809

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