Babushka as Icon (2020/22)

Relic, Reliquary, Icon, Memento Mori, Memorial, Value, Emotion, Love, Making, Religion.

In their daily life embroidery aligns closely with folkloric religious practices.

Embroidery is what brought researcher and Babushka together. The connection between embroidered artefacts and the region’s religious culture is some justification for producing investigative artworks informed by the making of icons. The other is emotion. 

The Babushka as Icon works were a response to my separation from the Babushkas due to the pandemic and then Russia’s war, and my reference were the everyday religious practices and domestic icons found in the zone. The artefacts I make are for them and about them and show how much I value them, that they are important. By spending time making and using the process to connect with them in my absence they know I am still thinking of them, that I have not forgotten them.

These works are a representation of the collective icons found in every home

across the exclusion zone, the central figure of most importance. Influenced by

the folk or peasant art domestic versions of the extremely valuable Russian and

Ukrainian orthodox symbolic representations of the ‘holy’ found in churches and museums, I use traditional skills and similar materials to emphasise the concept of home crafting and their kitsch-like aesthetic.

These works were exhibited in a solo research show, The Red Thread at MIMA

2021-22, with 14,000+ visitors.