Name/TitlePublication: Sewing Conflict
About this objectLimited run publication produced for Jenny Matthew's exhibition titled 'Sewing Conflict: Photography, War and Embroidery' at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow from 10th February to 12th May 2024. The cover image is Afghanistan from 'Defaced', "a series of portraits of Afghan women with their faces covered with embroidery to mark the point in 2021 when the Taliban retook the country and started limiting the freedom of women. This image is dedicated to poets and writers." The publication features many more images, about which Jenny states: "These embroidered images are a journey through my archive - Greenham Common in 1984 to the Ukraine border in 2023 via the Amazon, Afghanistan, Sudan and Gaza. They are a reflection of the stories I have photographed and issues I feel passionate about. By sewing on images I want to give value to fleeting moments of history and honour the many amazing people I have met in the course of my work."
MakerMatthews, Jenny
Maker RolePhotographer and Artist
Date Made2024
Period2020s
Place MadeScotland, Glasgow
Medium and MaterialsOrganic, paper
MeasurementsH: 211 x W: 149 mm
Subject and Association KeywordsArt & design
Subject and Association Keywordsphotography, photographers
Subject and Association KeywordsEmbroidery
Subject and Association KeywordsHuman rights
Subject and Association Descriptionhttps://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/event/jenny-matthews-sewing-conflict:
Sewing Conflict: Photography, War and Embroidery is a new solo exhibition by documentary photographer and filmmaker Jenny Matthews, whose work deals with issues of dispossession and human rights, with a particular emphasis on the lives of women and girls. She has worked all over the world for NGOs and on editorial assignments, covering momentous historical events including the guerrilla war and Independence of Eritrea, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the genocide in Rwanda.
Since 2020 Jenny Matthews has been making a series of photo quilts with edits of photos from her archive, with twenty-three of these hangings included in the exhibition here at Street Level Photoworks. Each photograph has been printed onto cotton linen, stitched together, and embellished with embroidery on material most often sourced from the countries in which the original images were made. Alongside these works the exhibition also features the series Facial De-recognition (2021), which is composed of thirty-five portraits of Afghan women with embroidery obliterating their features. This series was initiated to commemorate the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan in August 2021 and to highlight the subsequent negative effect on the lives of Afghan women and girls, with a loss of their freedom, rights, and identity. The exhibition also contains work from the series Torn Apart on the current crisis in Sudan and a new sequence of images from Gaza. This exhibition at Street Level Photoworks brings together Matthews’ various works in these formats for the first time.
Named CollectionGlasgow Women's Library
Object TypeBooklet
Object numberGWL-2024-30-1
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved