Essay by Gina Corridore for Contextualising Practice 

Needlework is a multidimensional discipline that has historically served as a socialised cultural tradition, an artistic practice, and a form of feminised domestic labour. Needlework has been co-opted as a device to propagate and further ideologies of essentialised womanhood. However, it also has distinct characteristics that differentiate it from other forms of domestic labour: it is socialised, commodity-producing, and image-generating. For these reasons, I intend to use my artistic practice to position needlework as a device with subversive potential, as well as a means of cultural preservation in the face of dislocation from my family’s ancestral homeland. This essay will begin with a brief overview of my family history and our relation to needlework practices, which will contextualise my analysis. I will follow this with a theoretical interrogation of domestic labour under western capitalism, referring to the writings of Karl Marx and various socialist-feminist scholars. I will then examine the traditional ideological associations of needlework as a form of domestic labour under capitalism, as well as counter-ideologies. This essay will then pivot to the challenges of preserving needlework practices in the face of historical economic and technological change, drawing on the theories of Mark Fisher and Robert D. Putnam. This theorisation will lay the groundwork for an informed reading of my own work, Performers (2025), in the final segment of this essay.

Family, labour, and needlework in the post-war state

I come from a large diasporic Italian family that emigrated to Australia in the 1950s as post-war economic migrants. My grandmothers, Maria and Armanda, were prolific needlework practitioners, each immensely skilled in knitting and crochet. Occupying a low socio-economic position, they practised their needlework and domestic labour alongside paid labour. Whilst the continuation of this practice after dislocation was necessitated by their economic status and inability to purchase new clothing and domestic goods, it was a labour of love. It served as cultural work, preserving a vast cultural lineage of needlework practices passed down through matrilineal lines. This marked it as a source of great pride and enduring cultural identity.

My mother’s generation, who aligned themselves with second-wave feminist values, largely disavowed needlework, perceiving it as a tool used to subordinate women and keep them in their homes. This is not to say their staunch attitudes did not benefit them. Among my family are most fiercely determined career women I have ever encountered, each of them leveraging their opportunities to make positive social contributions. However, there was an undeniable rupture in the transmission of these cultural skills and knowledges.[1]

Domestic labour

In the post-war context, as Vogel has argued, the overrepresentation of the housewife in Western media cultures and prevailing ideologies in capitalist nations period fostered a contradiction: that women, who were working for wages in increasing numbers, were supposed to believe that their true place was in the home (Vogel 1983). This was not a new phenomenon, as German philosopher Karl Marx pointed to the historical tendency of capital to increase labour power by extending employment to some women and children (see Gardiner, Himmelweit and Mackintosh 1975). While it is true that women’s participation in the labour force was yet to return to its wartime levels, the contradiction was evident. The subsequent feminisation of the workforce from the 1970s onward saw a more universal replacement of the male breadwinner-female carer model with the dual income-female carer model. Historically entrenched divisions of labour saw that many women carried on their domestic labours and duties of social reproduction in conjunction with waged labour (Bezanson and Luxton 2006).

As Gardiner et al. have noted domestic labours, which are conducted in spheres rigidly separated from sites of capitalist production such as the home, typically produce directly consumable use-values and services (Gardiner J, Himmelweit S, and Mackintosh M, 1975, Vogel L 1983). The domestic labour assigned the most significance and importance is the bearing and rearing of children. Despite its crucial role, it draws no wages (Uyen L H M, 2023). In Capital Volume I, Marx noted that: “The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is, and must ever be, a condition of the reproduction of capital. But the capitalists may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourers’ instinct of self-preservation and propagation”. Italian American theorist Silvia Federici notes that most of this social reproduction work is done by women, most of whom are not sufficiently aware of the vital role they play in the reproduction of labour (Federici S, 1975, cited in Uyen L H M, 2023). Ideologically, the role of reproduction is imposed upon women “under the banner of “love” as a sentiment somehow allegedly inherent in the nature of women” (Uyen L H M, 2023). Between the woman’s role in social reproduction, domestic labour, and waged labour, the saying: “a woman’s work is never done” is embodied (Arslan A, 2022, cited in Nyangchak N, 2024).

Ideological associations of needlework

Whilst some theorists such as Rozsika Parker have argued that needlework has historically served as a vehicle to subjugate women and keep them in the home (Cluckie L, 2008), there has been pushback against such claims. These claims are often grounded in the assumption that needlework wholly reflects, in an uncomplicated way, a connection to a feminine ideal of benevolence, domesticity, passivity and propriety (Gruner M R, 2021). However, due to its unique characteristics as one of the few commodity-producing forms of traditional domestic labour, it has historically offered women the opportunity to reshape and repopulate it with new images and icons. Thereby transforming it into a site in which ideology cannot only be accessed, but constructed, negotiated with, and contested (Cluckie L, 2008, Gruner M R, 2021). Movements such as ‘craftivism’ of the early twenty-first century have sought to re-evaluate needlework with activist sentiments and protest imagery, attempting to overwrite connotations of domesticated femininity (Greer B, 2014; Gruner M R, 2021). By positioning itself in opposition to traditional needlework, this movement unintentionally flattened complex histories of needlework. It also made one key oversight – that needlework, as the sole domestic labour that was commodity-producing and sign-producing, had always offered women the opportunity to speak to one another through visual signifiers, albeit more softly.

Due to its commodity-producing quality, needlework can also serve as an actualisation of women’s unpaid domestic labours. Mary, the woman who taught me how to knit and crochet, was one of the few women in my family’s orbit who continued to practice needlework after the mass feminisation of the workforce. Since her early childhood, the burden of domestic labour has been disproportionately placed upon her. Responsible for cooking, cleaning and rearing her younger siblings, she found solace in needlework. She attributes her love for the practice to its contemplative and restorative nature and the subsequent gratification of producing a tangible product. It seems to act as a reification of all her unpaid and unacknowledged labour. The intergenerational transfer of these practices to myself and others has also provided her with a source of pride and served as an act of cultural preservation.

Needlework in the context of historic economic and technological change

The continued transmission of needlework knowledges and traditions across generations has been fractured by the shifting world economic order and global economics. Capitalist political regimes of the late seventies and eighties ushered in a new economic era marked by an ideological shift away from the Keynesian-Fordist consensus to what is often referred to as the neoliberal world order (Bezanson K and Luxton M, 2006). Whilst the usefulness of the term ‘neoliberalism’ is a point of contention among theorists (see Klein N and Smith N, 2007), it generally refers to a set of economic measures classed under austerity. These measures include the decreased state regulation of capital, cuts to public funding, and increased taxation of individuals. These policies have consequently concentrated power in the hands of a small group of corporate and political elites, often referred to in contemporary media as oligarchs or tech oligarchs (Bezanson K and Luxton M, 2006). In his book Capitalist Realism (2009) cultural theorist Mark Fisher has theorised that neoliberal capitalism has systematically deprived working individuals of the time and resources required to produce new cultural products. This deprivation similarly disrupts the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and culture by robbing families and communities of the free time required to practice their traditions, rupturing the process of cultural preservation. The remaining free time that families have has been increasingly monopolised by consumer technologies.

The rapid development of consumer technologies over the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century has fundamentally altered the texture of our everyday lives and has contributed to the individualisation of entertainment and leisure time (see Fisher M, 2014, Putnam R D, 2000). At the beginning of the twentieth century, entertainment industries were largely confined to the domestic sphere and were concentrated in places such as music halls and cinemas. However, by the century’s close entertainment technologies had made their way into almost every modern household (Putnam R D, 2000). The haunting effects of this decentralisation were aptly captured by poet T.S. Eliot in his critique of television: “It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome” (Eliot T S, n.d. cited in Putnam R D, 2000). The individualisation of entertainment and subsequent atomisation of families and communities posed challenges for the baby boomer and silent generations in preserving socialised crafting traditions.

In the twenty-first century, we face a new monster, the beast of cyberspatial capital, which seeks to install its technologies into every aspect of daily life. As Fisher has argued, it operates by addicting its users, thereby monopolising our leisure time (Fisher M, 2009). After bonding with my needlework tutor Mary through socialised crafting, I began to lament the domineering presence of consumer technologies in my bonding rituals with other women. I now detect the irony in having spent many nights in my formative years watching The Bachelorette with my mother, who had staunchly disavowed needlework as a vehicle for subjugating women. In light of these reflections, I have found that to engage in socialised needlework or other handcrafts is to be temporarily removed from the “entertainment-control circuits of hypermediated consumer culture” (Fisher M, 2009). In this way, the continuity of needlework practice is threatened by the encroachment of cyberspatial capital into our daily lives, however, can simultaneously act as a site of resistance against this threat.

Needlework as artistic practice 

My work, Performers (2025), employs traditional needlework techniques with the use of unconventional materials to embody the concerns raised in the preceding paragraphs. Performers is a decorative banner constructed from jeweller’s wire using the traditional filet crochet technique. The technique’s direct point of origin is unclear; however, it has appeared in publications as early as 1833 in Western Europe and is believed to have been devised as an imitation of Italy’s traditional filet lace (see Karp C, 2018). As a form of domestic labour, filet crochet is stamped by rare characteristics: that it is both commodity-producing and image-generating. It has historically derived value from its visibility, particularly in western societies where women’s labours were often concealed, unacknowledged and unspoken (Cramer L, 2019). Performers was fabricated based on instructions from an antique crochet pattern book. The work intentionally presents the audience with antiquated cultural signifiers as a point of discussion. I have chosen to construct it out of wire for two key reasons: to alter the labour demand needed to fulfil the project, and to reify the labour required for the object’s own production.

The use of wire to construct the banner intentionally increases the labour demands of the project and simultaneously reifies this labour, making the audience aware of it. The first comments that my peers made when viewing the work generally hypothesise the intensity of the labour required to produce it. Some such comments include ‘how long did that take to make?’, ‘is it painful for the fingers?’ and so on (RMIT drawing students, personal communication, 28 May 2025). The making process, both durational and labour-intensive, was designed to temporarily remove myself for hourly periods from the entertainment matrix as I worked on the project whilst disconnected from all technology except for a timer Being disconnected from consumer technologies for a prolonged period felt like an endurance test, making me aware of my degree of dependence on such devices. After overcoming the discomfort of being temporarily cut off from this matrix, it began to feel like a glass of water for my brain. The resulting work, through the duration, labour, and the reification of this labour through material choice, was intended to illicit discussion around histories of unacknowledged and unexamined feminine domestic labour. This relates not solely to histories of feminine decorative needlework, but also social reproduction duties. The pictorial content of Performers memorialises circumscribed expectations of women to undertake social reproduction work under the ideologically imposed banner of “love” (Uyen L H M, 2023).

There is a historical precedent for the use of filet crochet as an educational tool for women due to its ability to construct pictorial scenes. Performers replicates a pattern from a 1979 republication of a 1915 American filet crochet pattern book, a source that sufficiently demonstrates the prevailing gender ideologies of its context through its prescriptive imagery. It is filled with Christian symbolism, cupids, matron figures, florals, and ‘feminine’ animalia such as rabbits and swans. All these imageries reflect a specific vision of essentialised womanhood that was vicariously taught to women through filet crochet. Performers specifically replicates a pattern featuring two figures dancing, presumably one represents a man and the other represents a woman, based on the silhouettes of their clothing. The image is repeated three times, and I have not altered the pattern from its original instructions in any way. As Butler has argued, gender is constructed through repeated acts within a regulatory frame (2002). This retrospectively assigns an ironic quality to the repetition of the unrevised imagery in Performers. The title itself is a nod to this irony. Furthermore, at a surface level reading, the pattern’s imagery has the covert intention of positioning the courting process as an aspiration and desire inherent to all women. Upon further interrogation, I suggest that it serves to entrench the ideology that it is the natural desire of women to undertake the work of social reproduction. As articulated previously, it is in the mass propagation of this ideology that responsibility for maintaining and reproducing is safely transferred to the labourers themselves. Rather than obscuring this imagery by repopulating my needlework with new icons, as some crafting movements have chosen to, I have intentionally replicated it. This was intended to demonstrate what I perceive to be the correlation between essentialised gender ideologies and the requirements of capital.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I employ my needlework practice to work through my own conceptual concerns. Performers operates as a site where my meanderings upon domestic labour, Marxism, gender ideologies, and cultural preservation are concentrated. My practice is both informed by these theoretical concerns and simultaneously attempts to give body to them, drawing my audience into this broader discussion. I hope to use my practice to stimulate nuanced conversations about needlework practice and feminine labour and attempt to demystify notions that needlework is exclusively disempowering. Finally, I seek to honour the women in my family whose labours and practices went vastly underacknowledged by preserving their knowledges and continuing their practices.

Notes

[1] I recognise the irony that the sacrifices of my ancestors and immediate family members have enabled me to reclaim these labour-intensive pursuits in the context of art school, whilst their labours went largely unacknowledged. I also recognise that needlework histories vastly differ based on location, culture and context; however, this essay will focus on needlework practice in my family within the contextual backdrop of western capitalism. Whilst needlework has been largely industrialised in many countries, I will be discussing needlework practised as domestic labour, not as waged labour.

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