Lisa Birke: The Knits

In knitting, one literally gives one’s time—chronicled in interwoven loops of yarn—to keep someone warm. Hand-knitted sweaters bring us closer to our mothers and grandmothers as we physically carry a document of their love and labour next to our skin, almost like a protective second skin. 

Straddling a liminal filmic space between installation, performance-for-video, and a contemporary fairy tale, The Knits introduces an ephemeral and relative notion of time, both in unravelling the threads of generational/familial relationships and in visually combining and subverting technological artifacts of the past and present (picture frame, tv screen and video projection).  Along the way, the work tugs at the crossed threads of art versus craft, gendered materiality, and the relationship we have with mother nature and her great divide in Canada.

The Knits is a loving and playful homage to the artist’s mother and her chronic affliction of “the knits”.  

The artist wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council Media Artists Creation Grant.