The Role of the Weaver in the Encounter with Life and Death

Abstract

I weave ritual textiles for funerals, loss, and sorrow. Weaving in relation to death is a topic in myths, literature, and storytelling, where the weft, woven row by row, resonates with human life lived day by day. So does the ending, cutting the weave off the loom. The craft of weaving thus acts like a symbolic reference and a metaphor for life and time passing. For me, weaving is a way to produce works of art, but it is also a process of reflecting and as such it is a necessary part of my creative process. My weaving is a research practice in which questions of how we deal with death in today’s society are concretely performed and tried out in practice where people encounter my textile art.