Artistic activism, the genetics of personality & archeological strategies

Your new Strategy Toolkit newsletter (January 14, 2024)

(1) A stitch in time…

The arts have throughout time been a fertile source of strategic ideas and expressions of power: both for the powerful and the powerless. And what such people then do as a result is even more interesting. Medical scientist and researcher in obstetrics Gemma McKenzie documents the long and honoured legacy of textile artists, including those who knit and embroider, in protest against the domestic violence experienced by women. You can’t stop reading this one. Trust me.

“In her book The Subversive Stitch (1984), and quoting the author Colette, the feminist art historian Rozsika Parker hints at the dangers of presuming the frivolity and mindlessness of stitching. In reference to her daughter, Colette writes:

[She] is silent when she sews, silent for hours on end … She is silent, and she – why not write down the word that frightens me – she is thinking.

Colette’s quote introduces the idea that there is much more to women’s use of thread as a form of protest than simply an emulation of historical sexist tropes. Something far deeper is happening. Its power may not be immediately visible, nor its statements overt and public. Yet there is impact: frequently subversive, often personal and sometimes far-reaching.”*

* McKenzie, G., “Threads of resistance,” Aeon (6 January 2025); https://aeon.co/essays/when-womens-needlework-becomes-an-act-of-subversive-protest