For Monument’s Sake!
Patchwork is a textile technique that uses material scraps to create new fabrics. Pieces of felt, leather, fur, silk, linen, and cotton are pieced together or appliquéd into larger designs. Historically rooted in domesticity, necessity, and community, the process is often associated with female* labor.
This multifaceted meaning and aesthetic language captured my interest as an MA student at the Royal College of Art in London (UK). Working in the fashion studios, I was surrounded by discarded textile treasures. Our building faced Kensington Gardens, where the golden gleam of the Albert Memorial—a lavish Gothic Revival monument honoring Queen Victoria's husband, opened in 1872—cast its presence through our fifth-floor windows.
At the time, I often reflected on my own presence within the college—an institution vaunting educational and artistic superiority and prosperity. The statue I saw from the studio windows and others I passed daily in Kensington Gardens seemed to embody these very values, most visible in their manifestation of phallic individuality. I invited my friends to help me mend and patch together the disconnect I felt from my surroundings. We ventured into the park to engage with the statues through conversations and interventions, working to integrate their presence into our artistic process. A short distance from the Albert Memorial, we encountered the statue Physical Energy by G.F. Watts (first cast in 1902). While often associated with the imperialist Cecil Rhodes, the statue symbolizes the dynamic force of ambition and the human drive to achieve.
Of the almost 1,500 monuments in London, more than a fifth are dedicated to named men (20.5%), while only 4% are dedicated to named women. The number of sculptures featuring animals—nearly 100—is double that of named women*. This disparity urged me to create a counter-monument, proclaiming female*, marginal, and collective experiences in an attempt to patch the distance between my textile work and institutional status and history.
My collaborative work, “For Monument’s Sake!”, is an installation wrapping and covering a hidden, moveable structure that demonstrates scale—yet in a way fundamentally different from the statues in Kensington Gardens. My patchworks
expose our very acts of mending, layering, and being in relation. They reveal an excess of traces from our engagement with the Kensington statues and their wider contexts through printed images, letters, portable sculptures, and assembled textile volumes. “For Monument’s Sake!” proclaims the value of "monumental patchwork" as an unheroic, highly resourceful, and joyful artistic process. During the opening of the graduation show, my collaborators and I performed as “Walking Monuments,” opening a dialogue with visitors.
Elements and extensions of the installation “For Monument’s Sake!”:
The sculpture “Leonoracle” refers to G.F. Watts’s Physical Energy in Kensington Gardens, a dramatic depiction of a rider on a rearing horse. I patch this imagery with depictions of horses by the British-born artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011). As a tactile oracle, the sculpture invites interaction: during the show opening, my collaborators and I encouraged visitors to turn the piece in their hands and write their visions for the future of the park's statues on a balloon.
The digital patchwork “Shawl 1 & 2” is based on a historical photograph of the sculptor G.F. Watts with the first cast of his statue, Physical Energy. I have manipulated the image to remove the rider; in his place, I introduce a fictitious textile titled “Shawl.” This entity addresses a letter to the “Horse,” in which I critique imperialism and its harm to people. In the letter, I also explore the physicality of the statue, the photograph, and other elements, examining their nature and potential from a historical and media-reflective perspective.
The piece below, titled “There Are Many Called XXX,” is a digital patchwork based on a photograph of mine. It depicts a scene featuring a rolling pin, modeled wax figures, and a laptop screen displaying the image of Albert Memorial—referred to here as “Big Albert.” In the accompanying text beneath the image, I describe the components of the scene as interacting protagonists.
Big Albert's golden glow made their backs supple, slowly caving in. The sound of the letters jumping on the keyboard anticipated a sudden spin of the rolling pin. Forestalling the collapse of their poses, they happily gave in to Big Albert’s siren call... .They found themselves thrown against a window with direct view on Big Albert, never reaching their desired fusion. Only the whopping punch of their bodies suggested Big Albert was (a) hit indeed. (Text: Franziska Windolf, 2021)
Using portable elements from the installation “For Monument's Sake!”, I venture outside to the statues in Kensington Gardens.
