Exposition

my Mothers (last edited: 2025)

Timour Bonin

About this exposition

This thesis explores the interwoven relationships between women, the textile arts, and its heritage, through a personal familial lens. Beginning with the question of the importance textile-making has held in our lives, I investigate whether engaging in crafting practices can reconnect us with tradition and allow us to re-root ourselves in the lives of our ancestors. Drawing from both historical context and intimate family stories, I trace the lineage of textile practices among the women in my family - my Mothers. These include my mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, whose experiences with sewing, knitting, crocheting, and weaving shaped their identities and daily lives. For many of them, textile-making was an act born of necessity, a survival skill often dismissed as “women’s work” within a patriarchal framework. For me, it is a conscious act and a choice - an exploration, a reclamation, and a form of personal and cultural healing. Through self-taught practice and reflection, I came to realise how textile traditions carry knowledge, strength, and connection across generations. My research, grounded in both historical analysis and storytelling, shows how making can become a language of remembrance and resistance, a way to bridge fragmented identity and reclaim belonging. In honouring the textile legacies of the women who came before me, I have tied myself into their story, not by romanticising their struggles, but to acknowledge their creativity and resilience. With each thread, I reconnect to a maternal lineage that continues to live through my hands.
typeresearch exposition
keywordstextile making, heritage, belong, ancestors, women and work, women, Storytelling, past, Craft, mothers, culture, memory, Caribbean
date13/04/2025
last modified25/06/2025
statusin review
share statuspublic
copyrightTimour-Aloïs Bonin
licenseAll rights reserved
languageEnglish
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3773122/3773121


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