Wearable Censorship
Women chain makers of the Black Country inspired my metal practice, exploring their craft alongside their protest to create a fairer world. I investigated the history of the hand hammered chain craft and fell in love with the political revolution that the craft ignited, which rippled throughout the sweat labour industries. This intense fight for equality through striking and demonstrations lead to the first national minimum wage. Reviewing my research, I intended to utilise the craft and aesthetics of chain making as a vehicle for communication and protest for a modern struggle, trans rights.
I immersed myself into material testing exploring the traditional hand forged process of constructing chain and modern soldered copper chain. I invested time into refining these skills working with sample lengths and repetition, learning by trial-and-error. Through drawing I discovered the importance of text in communicating my ideas of protest and a fight for trans rights. I extracted key themes and phrases from personal diary that explored my struggles and life as a trans person. This generated collages where I investigated notions of censorship and exposure through layering and masking out areas of the script. I explored the relationship between script and chain, blending through stamping into copper sheet, to explore aspects of vulnerability.
The intention of the final work is to empower the wearer to present and protect various elements; the positioning of the chain to encapsulate my Adams apple conveys notions of constraint and censorship, whilst the interplay of the chain with my hair provides a means for me to have control over what I reveal. The piece strives to be a social commentary on the challenges and a personal dive into the life of a trans person. Furthermore, to generate a discussion of the individual lives that build the wider community.
