The girl who transitioned from an elephant to a mouse and back again

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Fragments, kept and collected… a memory unravels. …At 10 yrs old she was cast as a baby elephant in a ballet concert and learnt the difference between petite, and short and fat. She remembers longing to be the beautiful, delicate little mouse- If only that 10 year old knew that one day she would no longer hope or wish to be anyone other than herself.

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Process: Refabricating cloth from scraps… past made present. All the discarded, forgotten things of memory and self- remixed, reimagined, reconstructed, woven together into a totem of strength and love. Kept and collected, vintage thread and textile remnants, and scraps of tangled threads are reconstructed into “fabric” – patch worked together. The two process of creating fabric – using formal, practiced crochet stitches and the organic process of tangling, weaving and patching threads and scraps together, symbolise the nature of both identity and memory – their malleability and construction. This piece symbolises the bits of our identity that we think we have carefully constructed. The things we present on the outside – the costumes and masks we wear; and – the bits we draw together in past made present – through memories and stories. The things we recall and share and all the tangled threads we keep hidden on the inside to meet expectations and/or to protect ourselves.