Abstract

Instead of seeing infancy as the beginning of a life rooted in linear time, and from which the subject gradually establishes itself as separate from the mother, a concept of time that accounts for the ongoing interrelationships between subjects and the reliving of past rituals in the present sees motherhood as a state that is constantly in renewal and selves as interdependent upon each other. In this thesis, I argue that embroidery works by Katie Errington Davies and Kesso Saulnier, which are a material form particularly poised to evoke the physicality of bodies, have great potential to visually manifest these challenges to hegemonic notions of selfhood and time particularly in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, whose stay-at-home orders had potential to highlight relationships and labours of care but ultimately reiterated Western concepts of individual isolation and linear time. Like breastfeeding and other labours of care that involve the repetition of an act like feeding or diaper changing, embroidery enacts and records such repetition in the form of a stitch, and is an art form that is particularly accessible to mothers and has a long history with the institution of motherhood. . . .