Embroidery for Change
By Jossie Warnant
Kylie Norton’s first experience of embroidery, like many young girls, was as a child when her mother taught her to embroider a ladybug. At the time, she saw this activity as a meditative, rather than artistic pursuit, but this idea of female connection and community would later become interwoven into her work.
She rediscovered embroidery when she was older, initially creating pieces for her own home and friends. Her early projects did not have a political message, but as she pursued studies in art and developed personal experience, feminism became a defining feature of her embroideries.
“It didn't start off being feminist at all. But because I was looking at my own world and my own experiences that just kind of naturally fell into it very quickly as well. And I've just kind of decided to own that now and explore it,” she says.
Much of Norton’s work is based on her personal experiences. Her work Blood Moon was inspired by a moment she encountered cycling to work. She saw a group of teenage boys “freaking out” because there was a used pad on the cycle path.
“I was thinking about it for days after, why were they freaking out so much? It's not that big a deal. And I was like, oh, it's because they have no idea what that is.”
Blood Moon aims to break down the taboo often associated with periods by examining indigenous cultural rituals around the shared female experience of menstruation. The work poses questions about female shame and opportunities for female connection through period synchronicity. Norton recalls “being taught how to hide my tampon in my sleeve” and contrasts this experience with the positive community based rituals of indigenous cultures throughout the world.
This idea of shared female experience, also inspired Norton’s more recent work, Tinder Nerves. Based on research showing that a significant number of women reported negative encounters on dating apps, Norton drew on her own experience of a Tinder date gone horribly wrong. Tinder Nerves displays graphic depictions of female bodies, along with message exchanges between Norton and friends that show the physical and mental toll of the largely unregulated dating app space.
“That artwork was me, in a therapeutic way, trying to deal with what happened to me, in a raw honest way, which I think a lot of people relate to.”
By portraying female figures in a way that is “grotesque to look at”, Norton aims to rid her work of the male gaze.
“I try to keep the men out of it, they're a third party being spoken about, their gaze is not in it whatsoever. It's a woman looking at women and talking to a woman.”
She focuses on the bonds women share and is looking to redefine intimacy, beyond traditional romantic relationships, to include different types of connections.
“Intimacy between women is just as important and sometimes more intimate than romantic relationships.”
As a traditionally feminine pursuit, Norton aims to “celebrate” female history through embroidery. She achieves this by embracing femininity and pursuing her art as a “reclamation of the tradition” of embroidery that subverts the stereotypical associations with domesticity and submissiveness.
“I don't think it's bad to be feminine. Some of us are feminine, that's fine. So I'm using that femininity to explore the reality of my experience of being feminine.”
Norton’s embroidery reimagines the role of traditionally feminine art to weave together shared female experiences away from the glare of the male gaze, making her work an interesting comment on femininity in 2020.