Connective Fibers II

The threads that bind us persist below the surface of everything, a neverending pulse of twisted roots of blood vessels and stories, entangled mats of scar tissue and personal relationships. The borders between our bodies, our planet, and the ephemeral nature of what makes us human, are imaginary. 

Connective Fibers explores how to dissolve those perceived boundaries through sculpture. Fiber art and specifically wet felting, has a history as long as human civilization but it is often perceived as craft, hobbyist art or women’s work when really it is an integral form of storytelling that is fundamental to understanding history and culture. Using fiber art as a vehicle to tell uncomfortable and painful stories, as Zondag does in Connective Fibers, creates a dissonance that pushes the observer to wrestle with the themes presented; healing emotional trauma, the search for identity and dissolution of borders between the body and our environment. 

The sculptures are primarily created through wet felting, a full body textile technique that involves both the meticulous layout of wool fibers and subsequently slamming the fibers against hard surfaces to develop the fabrics structure and the sculptures form. It is a technique that requires presence and care as well as physical release and strength, these are tools needed for both felting and the healing of emotional wounds. The creation of these sculptures was an act of both. How we move through the world rests fundamentally on the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, our actions and our relationships. Storytelling is healing, storytelling though physical art making can be transformative.

Zondag's work weaves together visual narratives of the visceral body and the natural world, using organic forms as mirrors of personal experiences to both process and share her stories.

The Stain

I started thinking about the pulse that underlies everything, this steady heartbeat of matter and interconnected organisms and energy that runs through everything all of the time, we just don’t see it if we’re not paying attention. I thought about wanting to peel the wall paper back on the world to reveal the pulse of life beneath it all.

Something interesting happened when I was installing the work, it changed, or more that what I was making revealed itself to me. It was a stain, a larger than life period stain on my childhood sheets and I saw the pulse, another force of nature that’s forced into hiding.

There has always been this forced societal shame around periods. From pop culture to historical practices, this powerful natural cycle that women’s, non binary and trans mens bodies experience has been shamed in order to suppress. When your culture and your country teach you to be ashamed of your body, they can keep you small and quiet. There is fear there, fear in the power we have when we embrace our bodies and by extension fully embrace ourselves and those around us. I wanted to shout my embarrassing stains from girlhood, the spots of blood I was terrified of anyone seeing, to reach back to myself and anyone who has ever experienced that societally
imposed shame to rebuild those stains as these powerful, intricate forces of life, of growth, a beautiful entanglement of creation and destruction happening within our bodies. IT is power, it is beauty, it is who we are.