ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that alternative approach to memorial culture, one informed by feminist perspectives and the contextual reframing of 'women's work' in memorial culture. Some artists use traditional materials but in intimate, hand-held scale. The Western tradition of monuments and memorials exudes a stereotypically ­'masculine' quality – large scale, hard materiality, heroic celebration. In seeking to 'feminise' memorial culture, feminist work at times engages the very strategies it critiques, such as the use of monumental scale and 'noble' materials such as stone and bronze, but plays with their conventional associations. Many aspects of memorial and monument work involving textiles have inevitable affiliations with sewing and craft. The chapter describes the embodied, feminist approaches to remembrance and mourning and offers an alternative to the static façade of conventional monumentality, the immersive process of making art becoming a means for engaging with feelings of loss, absence and trauma.