The Textiles and Materiality Cluster at Milieux announces the winners of its twelfth round of student research grants. The Cluster awarded Individual Research Grants to: Shelley Ouellet (MFA Fibres & Material Practices) and Jessie Stainton (MA Communications). The Cluster awarded a Seed grant to Marie-Christine Larivière (BFA Design and Computation Arts), Anne Boutet (BFA Design and Computation Arts and Art History), and Audrey Coulombe (BFA Design and Computation Arts).
Shelley Ouellet – Shelley’s graduate research focuses on how representations of landscape have been used to construct a brand of Canadian identity that reinforces colonialism and supports an economy of perpetual resource extraction. Linked political and cultural policies intended to champion the modernization and industrialization of a young nation post-WWII have successfully emblemized fictional representations of majestic and unpeopled landscapes that continue to represent Canada to this day. These images help to sustain dominant historical narratives of settler discovery, exploration, and conquest. Through a series of embroidered landscapes, Heaven on Earth in the Sitting Room aims to critique this representation of national identity.
Jessie Stainton – What does it mean to make art accessible? Not just by adding a ramp or closed captions – the checkmarks of regulated access— but in thinking of access as transformative of artwork itself. For Which Bodies? uses soft-circuit sensors, sound design and textile components to create two multi-sensory textile collages where access is considered part of the process. Drawing on the fields of critical disability studies and sensory studies, this project utilizes a two-phase
methodology in order to a) experiment with creative methods of increasing access in art and b)
interrogate the implicit hierarchies and assumptions built into the traditional art-audience relationship.
Marie-Christine Larivière, Anne Boutet, and Audrey Coulombe – La Fabrication additive en arts textiles: évaluer ses affordances en mouvement et ses applications potentielles en danse et arts performatifs focuses on “how different physical and mechanical properties of a 3D printed costume can impact the communication of theme, self-perception, and body movements during a dance performance.” Although 3D printing of textiles is not a new concept, little research has been done to explore their affordance when put into motion. For this project, the team intends to expose the properties of the printed materials, which differ from those of traditional textiles.
Congratulations to all of the winners!
textiles + materiality research cluster 