Women’s role in textile creation has historically functioned as a means of social control, simultaneously constraining women while devaluing their creativity as a service to patriarchal expectations. Centred in necessity and tied to ideas of practicality, maintenance, and domestic utility, women’s creations in this sphere become regarded as solely functional, excluding them from rightful recognition. Through studying processes of rug design (a craft that is traditionally domesticated and women made) this project reimagines a rug in a form stripped of its traditional material and function. The rug explores how narratives surrounding textile work are born from a systematic bias which not only allows for an ongoing dismissal of women’s work but reflect underlying ideologies that can dangerously lead to much more tangible infringements on women’s rights.

Refusing a material form, the rug uses laser engraving into wood as a medium to allow a sole focus on the artistry and aesthetics of rug design, elements which are often valued in distinctions of fine art. Presented in an exhibition setting, it intends to challenge traditional ideas of artistic legitimacy, prompting a reflection on how value is assigned through context, presentation, and institutional frameworks. Its finished form will also exemplify what is lost when textile materiality is absent. Rather than attempting to argue how the artistry in women’s textile work should be appreciated as equal to these practices of fine art (though I believe it should), the making of this rug confronts how this divide between a woman’s craft and a male’s fine art is a gendered issue. With this it questions if these artworks should be promoted into this exclusive category of ‘real’ or ‘fine’ art, given that the response evoked from many female-made textile creations is felt even when absent, regardless of this concocted label.