Carceral Craft: the material of oppression or expression?

This project investigates the potential for oppression, as well as expression, in textile crafts made in carceral contexts.

Drawing on alternative records to sources typically researched, namely textile craft artefacts made in carceral contexts and their depictions in life writing, exposes craft’s potential to discipline but also provide agency.

By studying craft made in historical and contemporary carceral settings, latent functions of craft overlooked by craft research, which has instead become preoccupied with an identity of craft that is synonymous with wellbeing, are revealed.

The project’s research methods move beyond a reliance on sight alone, to instead engage materially with object analysis of artefacts to access the embodied knowledge of the artefacts’ makers.

Sources include historical textiles in the archive, contemporary examples circulating through prison gift shop economies and first person accounts of making recorded in life writing.

The research maps, compares and analyses (chronologically and geographically) three case studies: batik production in Indonesian women’s prisons in the early 1900s and today; bead weaving in World War I Turkish prisoner-of-war camps and contemporary prisons; late 19th century and contemporary lace making in South African prisons.

In addition to challenging dominant views of craft, the research undertakes decolonial thinking that moves beyond an understanding of prison labour based exclusively on written government sources.