Opening Times: 6 – 15 Nov | Tuesday – Saturday (11am – 5pm) | Sunday (11am – 4pm)
Location: Millennium Gallery, 48 Arundel Gate, Sheffield City Centre, Sheffield S1 2PP
About the exhibit
This installation is a collaboration between artist Nadia Mehdi and researcher Dr Ames Clark. Drawing on Dr Clark’s research with abolitionist organisers, Nadia has translated its insights into a handmade work: an intricate patchwork jacket.
The garment has been made slowly by hand incorporating a wide variety of textiles techniques: traditional quilt blocks, English paper piecing, ruching, cyanotype, beadwork, pintucks, weaving, embroidery and appliqué are layered across its surface. Each technique demands patience, and together they carry the work’s central idea: care takes time.
Dr Clark’s research explores how care reshapes our sense of time and images and quotations from their work with abolitionist organisers are woven throughout the jacket’s design, bringing collective voices into the fabric itself. Slow, layered and shared, the making of the piece resists capitalist measures of speed and productivity.
The jacket itself is displayed partially finished. This decision embodies the liberated futures toward which care works, and reminds us that care is not a single, static moment but an ongoing, future-facing act.
Dr Ames Clark is currently a Research Associate for the CHANSE funded project ‘LGBTI+ youth well-being across Europe: Imagined futures in turbulent times’.
Nadia Mehdi is an artist based in Sheffield. Her practice spans sound, textiles and paper collage.