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All the Soft Things You Gave Me (2)
pieced quilt, cotton batting, thread, buttons, polyfil
60" x 38" x 11"
by Katheryne Flake
www.kateflake.com
In my interdisciplinary practice, I use photography, textiles, and printmaking to create sculptures that examine my identity as a queer, non-binary person and the relationships among my family, memory, and body. I navigate the delicate line between honoring the people in my family and the culture I inherited, while also pushing back against its restrictive, normative boundaries. All the Soft Things You Gave Me is about the failure of my enculturation into femininity in childhood. As a person assigned female at birth, I was taught that femininity had to look and behave a certain way. However, these rules began to fail me as I aged and realized I couldn’t fit within their restrictive confines. The rocking chair is a symbol pulled from my earliest memories of childhood and Southern culture. This soft, quilted form is a self-portrait. It too struggles to conform to the function and shape of a chair, just as I fail to adhere to gendered expectations.
All the Soft Things You Gave Me (2)
pieced quilt, cotton batting, thread, buttons, polyfil
60" x 38" x 11"
by Katheryne Flake
www.kateflake.com
In my interdisciplinary practice, I use photography, textiles, and printmaking to create sculptures that examine my identity as a queer, non-binary person and the relationships among my family, memory, and body. I navigate the delicate line between honoring the people in my family and the culture I inherited, while also pushing back against its restrictive, normative boundaries. All the Soft Things You Gave Me is about the failure of my enculturation into femininity in childhood. As a person assigned female at birth, I was taught that femininity had to look and behave a certain way. However, these rules began to fail me as I aged and realized I couldn’t fit within their restrictive confines. The rocking chair is a symbol pulled from my earliest memories of childhood and Southern culture. This soft, quilted form is a self-portrait. It too struggles to conform to the function and shape of a chair, just as I fail to adhere to gendered expectations.