MILLICENT KENNEDY STUDIOS

Tools of labor like workers are frequently disregarded, until they break down, or can’t be used anymore. Material interest in abandoned tools and a donated broken sewing machine led me to reflect on the textile industry. Fabric was our first technology, allowing us to transport materials, shroud our bodies, and live in inhospitable environments. The sewing machine, which facilitated a swift turn in the industrial revolution was in its time highly contentious. The first fully sewing machine-operated factory was burned down by tailors fearing the loss of their hand-stitched industry. The history of textile work has historically been undervalued, experienced craftspeople were outpriced in lace making because labor was taken without the payment of orphans and nuns. Though technology has changed, the cycle of exploitation has not. The hands present in the edition of prints are sourced from documentary videos and photographs of workers in sweatshops, sewing garments, and mixing dye vats. The title of the installation piece is also pulled from a worker’s statement “We have hands, and so we work”

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The action of dismantling and hand-stitching a sewing machine into hand-printed and dyed textiles ritualizes the embedding of technological advancements in their historic roots. The dichotomy of industry and slow stitch come together in these works using second source materials and seizing the means of production simultaneously. The individual parts of this installation are available for sale on their own, emphasizing the individual workers being part of the whole of the social fabric. The people who eventually own them are connected to their neighbors and strangers alike.