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Undoing as Activism

Jill Price

Focusing on contemporary textile artists, Undoing as Activism provides examples of where “unmaking” and “undoing” are creative acts that draw attention to the hidden potential in waste and lead to the undoing of other material and immaterial objects. I include case studies also bring into focus how caring, collecting, and researching become acts of undoing that bring attention to a never-ending chain of living and non-living materials that often go unconsidered in global networks of extraction, production, dissemination, consumption and disposal. The paper ends by posing questions to the reader about what else needs undoing and how one might go about getting it undone.

Keywords: Undoing, Activism, Sustainability, Materialism, Textiles 

Jill Price is an artist, curator and educator recently awarded Queen’s Arts and Science Dean’s Award for Environmental Justice. Receiving a 2016 SSHRC and a Research & Writing Award for her MFA thesis Land as Archive, Price’s Cultural Studies PhD project investigates how to unmake one’s way out of the Anthropocene.