I am pleased to be able share some exciting news – an embroidered scroll I submitted to the Bodleian earlier this summer in response to a call-out has been awarded Second Prize! It will also be displayed as part of their exhibition ‘Beyond the Pale’ at the Old Bodleian Library in Oxford from 17 Sept – 6 November, and then be accepted into their permanent collection. I am over the moon!
The original call-out from the Bodleian Bibliographical Press in April was inviting artwork submissions that ‘respond to, and engage with, black shapes on the printed page’. I was intrigued by the subject matter, and thought immediately of heavily redacted government documents reluctantly released after Freedom of Information requests. I had been appalled by the recent announcement by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that the UK intended to start forcibly deporting refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. I decided to channel my anger into an artwork as a response to this shocking immigration policy.
I found a transcript of Priti Patel’s announcement online, and printed it out. After just a few minutes of highlighting words from the main body of the speech, I realised that a hidden – more truthful – message could be revealed through a reverse redaction. A printed redaction would have blocked out most of the text of the speech, but I wanted there to remain a sense of the wording in its original form to underline the incredulity that these were the actual words spoken by the Home Secretary. I decided upon embroidery as my chosen medium as I have an interest in ‘subversive stitch’ – using a traditionally domestic craft as an unexpected means of protest. I also felt that the dedication required for such a time-consuming method of working matched my strength of feeling about this important issue.
I chose to partially obscure much of the speech with lines of embroidered tally marks. These represented the thousands of individuals who faced deportation under this cruel scheme. I also wanted to reflect the dehumanising way that people can be reduced to target numbers when discussing immigration. I typeset and printed out a section of the original speech onto calico and then began the task of highlighting words by stitching the redaction in tally marks. The embroidery took around six weeks to complete – stitching most evenings after work. It proved to be a cathartic response to the some of the rage I was feeling about the injustice of this unethical policy.
I decided to make the final embroidery into a scroll – a format which highlighted the performative nature of the announcement… delivered, with some fanfare, in Rwanda as an illustration of the conspicuously ‘tough approach’ that the government wanted to be seen to be pursuing. Whilst I was completing the piece, the first planned deportation flight was halted after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. Although, at the time of writing, no flights have yet left the UK, relief is short-lived as the new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has reiterated her intention to continue with this inhumane scheme.
It has been proven that the threat of deportation is very damaging to the mental health of vulnerable migrants already here in the UK, but has certainly not been a deterrent to those subsequently arriving in the hope of claiming asylum. The scheme is prohibitively costly, and appears to exist primarily as a piece of populist theatre to placate the right wing press. It angers and saddens me to see our country reduced to this, and I know that this is not who we are.
I am happy to share my prize with Asylum Welcome, a charity I have worked closely with since 2005, whose amazing work with asylum seekers and refugees in Oxford very much provided the original inspiration for the artwork.
