Becoming the Material Body: An Embodied Methodology for Encountering the Unknown

What memories does the body carry without knowing? In the thesis project Becoming the Material Body: An Embodied Methodology for Encountering the Unknown, I combine residue from my body, sweat, skin, dreams, with other material bodies, Silk, Beeswax, Garment Fragments, Cedar, and Stone to access stories that lie outside conscious memory. I work with my transgenerational body, a body shaped by inheritances passed across generations through genetics and the social conditions of past lives, including colonialism and patriarchy. My methodology uses deskilled techniques that refuse mastery by leaving the hand visible, uneven stitching, tangled Threads, structures intentionally left unfinished. I see these techniques as an ethical framework that refuses the patriarchal and colonial constructs of mastery, linear time and bodily control that we unknowingly carry and reenact. My practice incorporates touch, rearrangement, material entanglements to make unknown stories experientially knowable. The resulting body of work incorporates embroidery, deconstructed quilts, photography and installation. It does not resolve what feels unsettled but makes space for it to be held and seen. Embodied textile practices can transform unknown stories from present and past generations. In sitting with the unknown and uncomfortable we cultivate empathy and care for those beings that lie outside our sphere of knowing, for what cannot be spoken, quantified or resolved.