Swimming with my Ancestors

Ribbon skirt, 2020.

This piece is the creative result of a dream about swimming with my ancestor grandmothers. Honouring their names and identities through beadwork on a series of velvet ribbons (with one ribbon left blank in honour of my future ancestor grandmothers), each of these women makes up a part of the woman I am today. Their presence is within me, with their resilience a guiding force in who I am as a designer, maker and thinker. Water plays a significant role in this piece as it embeds itself within every inch of the ribbon skirt, deeply soaking between the beads and the textile’s storied weave. In water, the fabric's weight presses against my skin, fostering a new relationship between my body and the materiality of the skirt itself. With this performance, I am no longer wearing the skirt alone. I am wearing this skirt with my grandmothers.