Mourning Shawl
These posts outline my thinking and research for a project of hand-crafted data visualisations for my Master of Data Science. Start here for more context and there are links to some of my other posts through this one.
The idea of making a mourning shawl came to me as I was creating my mind map for the project. I had noticed the links I had created between Ada Lovelace, the Jacquard weaving machine / fabric manufacturing, Victorian Colonialism, and the idea of the Eastern colonies being a dumping ground for British manufacturing. There is a macabre loop between the East India company using the Bengali textile industry for massive profit, then aiding in it’s collapse, in areas including those that are now Bangladesh, which is now the second largest garment manufacturing industry in the world. Reflecting on the images I saw of dead garment factory workers in the collapse of Rana Plaza, I thought about the rituals of mourning. I have always had an interest in Victorian mourning rituals since I read Possession by A.S. Byatt, and the use of Jet jewelry which sometimes contained the plaited hair of a dead loved one. Victorian mourning rituals reached its apex on the death of Prince Albert, where Victoria entered a period of mourning until her death, which means it lasted about forty years(another link back to Victorian England again).
Images of Rana Plaza in the days after the collapse, show families and friends looking for their loved ones at the site; pure grief, confusion, shock, holding up pictures of their missing loved ones.
I thought that a visualisation for the number of dead could link somehow back to the process of mourning itself, and I thought of white shrouds as well as mourning garments.
Images of black ruffled capes, veils and caps entered my mind. I thought it may be a way I could incorporate my plan to use craft (particularly knitting) as a way of visualising data, and a shawl seemed like a good direction to explore.
I was consciously trying to create something that I could wear again, as a statement against the pace of fast fashion, and the social and environmental consequences of a huge market of fast and cheap garments. I didn’t want to make this item and then not wear it. I also wanted to make somehting that was a respectful way of marking the deaths of all these people. Something with more thought than presenting the data in a chart. I would slowly create a momento mori for them by hand, marking each individual death by a space created by stitches of YO k2tg YO k1.
Doing further research into the history of mourning clothing, it is clear that the clothes themselves are a creation of industry, commerce and manufacturing. Sonia Bedikian* provided a fascinating historical overview in her article “The Death of Mourning: From Victorian Crepe to the Little Black Dress” (Bedikian 2008). She outlined that wearing special clothes in a period of mourning began in the fourteenth century, and was only really made possible by the lowered costs of garments due to manufacturing. These largely were influenced by the clothing worn by those in the religious orders. (Bedikian 2008, p.37) Although accessible only to those with a high disposable income, lower costs of garments due to manufacturing techniques meant people could afford more than one set of clothes that had limited usage.
The Victorians really took mourning to a whole new level. After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria was in mourning for the next forty years until she died. There was a formalised system of mourning in the Victorian period, and this fit in with very elaborate funeral rituals. A widow would have to wear a plain dress, veil and bonnet for two years, and at various stages she could add in items such as beads, trims and jet jewelry. After the first stage of mourning in all black (at least a year), she entered half mourning, and this stage could last six months to a lifetime. In half-life mourning she was only permitted to wear colours like white, mauve and grey. (Bedikian 2008, p.39).
Further, mourning fashion was exclusively for women, especially wives. She was expected to wear mourning clothing not only to demonstrate her sorrow, but also as a signal to potential suitors she was not available. Men on the other hand did not need to worry and could remarry almost immediately. The male trappings of mourning later were merely worn my funereal workers. As women’s mourning clothing became more restrictive, men’s became less important, and eventually not worn at all. (Bedikian 2008, p.39)
So, again, this idea finds itself arcing back to original group of ideas. Mass-manufacturing, the role of women in society and work. I was slightly taken aback by the commercial nature and restrictiveness of mourning garments (or widows weeds). I had initially thought that this cape would be a respectful gesture; a hand-made garment honouring those who died. Research into mourning wear now means this has another layer of meaning; a commemoration of the event and the lives lost, but also a reflection on the commercial nature of fashion and the restriction on women’s lives.
The process
My first step was how to take my sketches and make them into a garment. I wanted a shawl that wrapped the body in the pattern. I researched various ways I could represent the number of deaths, and used a pattern by knitwear designer Stephen West called ‘Holy Chevrons’. The yarn used is by Hedgehog Fibres in Ireland. I feel very positive about using this yarn as it is hand dyed in Ireland in small batches, and the story of the woman who created the brand Beata Jezek, is great. It feels good to be using yarn that supports a small business, and is made with very high standards. I also got the yarn from a shop in Sydney; again , a store recently open and run by two women called Skein Sisters. The main colour I selected called Raven is a mix of colours that would be appropriate for first and second stages of mourning — ranging from a black to violet. I did a small chevron hem in alternating Hedgehog Fibres called Truffle and Malice. The hem is quite bright in comparison to the main body of the shawl, and was added as an acknowledgement to the bright coloured sari’s that I have seen worn by the garment workers.
I was very pleased with the the drape of the shawl, which was achieved by concentrating 75% of the eyelets close to the neckline. This increased my stitch count significantly to I was able to achieve a gather along the top of the back area. I like to think this is a nod to Victorian fashion, and Ada Lovelace’s portrait and lacy black shawl.
1129, or 1134?
I counted the number of eyelets that were created as I went along. One of the issues I discovered was that there are a varying number of deaths recorded in the Rana Plaza building collapse. In my initial research I recorded that 1134 people were killed. Then when I went to verify this at a later stage I found the number was stated as 1129. I based my projects on this number, but have since found the number of deaths quoted again as 1134, or 1133, as well as 1129. As I am giving this particular number such focus, it’s made me see the strangeness of a number so large and trying to fathom the number of people attached to it. The difference is five between the number I used and the other number. In my professional role, five (dollars, percentage points, applications etc) could be considered a reasonable number to have missing, especially if there are two different systems measuring what we are capturing, and the scale is in the millions or billions. This number five though represents human lives lost, and I feel a deep sense of guilt that I may have not represented all of them. I have begun to wonder how accurate any of these numbers are.
Mimi Onuoha, an artist and researcher writes about how data is collected and what goes missing or unrecorded. Her work The Library or Missing Datasets (2016) is a cabinet of empty swinging manila file holders, with labels of uncollected data sets. These statements hang as unanswered questions; “Cause of June 2015 Black Church fires”, “Trans people killed or injured in instances of hate crime”, “Mobility for older adults with physical disabilities or cognitive impairments”. She calls this work “an ongoing physical repository”, and how even in a “data-saturated” world, the data we collect is not complete. I appreciate the word “physical” in her description. So much of what we deal with is intangible. Big numbers get thrown around. They are hard to imagine. They are not tangible. What Onuoha does is make an absence physical. My project has attempted to make tangible a different type of absence (death /people who were there and are no longer with us), but it was recorded (even if the numbers may vary depending on the source).
Reactions
I have received interesting reactions by people who saw the shawl as it was being made or after it was completed. It’s an inviting object to hold and feel. Twice though, different people holding the shawl have been told what it represents and they let it go, slightly horrified. Other times, it has resulted in interesting and meaningful conversations about the Rana Plaza building collapse, and the exploitative nature of aspects of the garment industry. It may not be considered a successful “data visualisation” but as an object that embodies an event and represents a number of deaths, it has resulted in lots of good discussions and questions. People hold it up to the light and take in the number of spaces or holes there are in the knitting. They ask how many they can see. I like how it is a garment in itself, and it keeps me warm. That that I invested time in it’s creation (between forty and fifty hours I estimate) and I will wear it for a long time to come. There has not been a time that I have put it on and not thought about what it means and what it represents. If I am wearing a light coloured top underneath the spaces that represent a life lost are very visible and I marvel at the number. It serves to remind me why our choices are so important. It’s bought an issue that may not be normally something I think about all the time close to my regular thoughts.
Next Up: What does 1129 look like?
References
Bedikian, S.A. 2008, ‘The Death of Mourning: From Victorian Crepe to the Little Black Dress’, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 35–52.
*At the end of Sonia Bedikian’s interesting account of mourning fashion, there was a paragraph that made me take in a short, sharp breath. It is a memorial paragraph to her by a friend that is very moving. She had passed away in 2006 aged 27. “This manuscript is just one example of her intelligence, curiosity and brilliance.”
