Suzanna James

Suzanna James work considers the inherent link between women and the handmade. From a background in sustainable textiles, her practice led research was developed during her MA at RCA (QEST, Coats Foundation, WCFK), and explores the concept of Caring Cloth praxis, a care-led, socially engaged, intercultural meeting place of research and practice.

The work acts as a homage and a bow, in reverence to the words and works of a global community of women makers. Within her practice, she kneels at the altar of women’s most infamous medium of cloth, which has silently, or not so silently, kept women’s account through history, finding herself in a role of intimate listening to the voice of women through cloth.

Sitting and making with women is something that constantly characterises her practice, and even in an absence of this she sits in a circle of women’s words and works which talk to each other in a constant chatter; knitting a practice which is an ode, a sonnet, to the women even underneath the rubble.

The name of this praxis, Caring Cloth, claims the potential of care through the making of textiles. It names ‘radical compassion’, story, time, ‘quiet disruption', 'delicate activism', and 'openness to the unknown', amongst its tools, and locates itself within sustainability’s social justice.

In her collection ‘Making Something of Absences’ she reflects on the words of three women in the creation of material responses. Linda Tuhiwai Smith ‘openness to the unknown’, Dana Sonnenchein ‘the art of making something of absences, of what is felt more than known, the history of women’, and bell hooks, ‘you have been my most intimate listener’.

Finally, words from her own reflections on the contradictions of the making of textiles within a global community influence the work: ‘harm and healing carried through my beloved, cloth surprises me with its whole truth’. Her practice combines textiles, photography and writing in an interdisciplinary praxis. Louise Bourgeois’ words ring in her ears:

‘The needle is used to repair damage; it's claim to forgiveness.’