textile

To Have and To Hold 2021

To Have and To Hold is a textile and print work confronting domestic violence and death within conjugal relationships.

A repurposed wedding dress is combined with layered materials, corporeal marks, and printed country alpha codes marking real-world international figures of intimate partner violence. The work also references the silence surrounding this violence and the socially accepted norms that allow such harm to persist. Together, these elements highlight both the global prevalence of intimate partner violence and the cultural mechanisms that enable it.

The work reveals the tension between care and control within domestic spaces and the relationships that unfold there—spaces culturally framed as intimate and safe. It bears witness and disrupts the silence surrounding harm, tracing the relational entanglements of place, culture, identity, and being, and highlighting how intimate experiences of violence are shaped by, and reflect, broader social and cultural systems. Situated within a transnational, interdisciplinary practice, the work engages ecological, social, and technological systems, attending to living, non-living, social, and material systems, and their interconnected impacts on human vulnerability and resilience