The Fabric of Our Lives
BORDER
Life, as we have characterised it, has a ‘code.’ Sequences and patterns of four different ‘bases’ form ‘the thread of life,’ our DNA, our genetic code. The vast thread of human DNA is miraculously twisted, coiled and looped into ‘chromatin’ in the nucleus of each of our cells. But small circles of DNA are also found in our mitochondria which are inherited through the maternal line, tracing all the way back through generations of women in our lineage. A small section of mitochondrial DNA, a D-loop, is triple stranded and is one of the more variable regions of our DNA. It can hint at where our lineage may have started out, and moved around the globe, tracing lines over time on a map.
Woven as a border to the tapestry the repeating and non-repeating patterns of a section of mitochondrial DNA are made visible, and physical.
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QR CODE
‘Quick Read’ codes have become part of our lexicon, leading as this one does, to information on a website. They resemble weaving drafts, the system used to analyse structures of woven cloth, with black boxes for ‘warp on top’ and white boxes for ‘weft on top.’ This QR code was randomly generated in seconds but it took months and months to accurately weave it!
Tapestries act as historical documents, records of specific periods in time. In the future this handwoven QR code will help to date this particular tapestry.
RIBBON
In the language of medieval tapestries, ribbons are the means of communication. Scrolls of words suspended above the scene, hint at the story unfolding below. Ribbons of spoken words unfurl from the mouths of people, reaching out to other people.
This twisting, swirling, unfurling ribbon depicts colours and patterns contained in the beat, hum and buzz of words passed from one woman to another. One huge conversation spoken in the universal language of cloth and fabric about family, celebration, home, traditions, beliefs, love, loss, challenging times, darkness, illness and disease, research into illness and disease, honouring and remembering the dead, lives richly lived and treasured memories.
ALL THE FABRICS
Each of the 173 individual pieces of cloth and fabric represented in this woven ribbon were held and spoken about during ten Cut From The Same Cloth Get Togethers across Ireland during 2024. The 173 stories about these fabrics were shared between women from minority communities and female biomedical researchers.
Each fabric story is a doorway into the pattern of a person’s life or of their life’s work. On common ground, through the language of fabric, connections are made and trust is built.
Photo Credit: Anthony Hobbs
Video Credit: Crannóg Media