Sarah-Joy Ford

Ford works with embroidery, quilting and surface pattern design in order to ask questions of queer narratives, fictions, histories and identities. Through the embodied materiality of textiles and an affinity with the domestic, the works slip between public and private moments, protest and parade, desire and loss.

Working with textiles situates the practice within the historically rich and complex relationship between needlework and women; one that has acted both as a tool for oppression and a weapon of resistance. This history incorporates an assortment of othered making practices, quilts, banners, knitting, folk art and other disobedient objects. It is this historical closeness to resistance, disobedience and outsider-ship from institutionalism that provides a material space to negotiate, articulate and make visible queer kinship and culture.

Her current practice uses quilting as a methodology to de-stabilise constructions of lesbian identity within archive.  The quilts patchwork together representations of lesbians, surviving and thriving , articulating desire and opening up the archive to haptic and affectual encounters with queer heritage. This project looks to open discursive spaces where queer identities and polotics can be set into motion offering speculative visions of queer futures outside of assimilation.