Intermeshed: queer materiality

This presentation explores the long history of mesh fabrics, as the first common textile invented by so many different civilizations. Mesh is rooted in primary needs: feeding and providing shelter. But it saw a revolution in the 1970s with the development of sportswear, and eventually this material--especially the mesh tank top or brief-- became recuperated as a semiotic marker for many gay men and queer individuals. Looking closely at the use of mesh textiles in garments in the present day provides a compelling insight into processes of misuse, adaptation and appropriation, and the eventual re-entry into the mainstream as the 2019 fashion weeks have shown.

I will present this research in dialogue with my art practice, in which I am incorporating, cutting, piecing and embellishing this material into different objects and sculptures as a way to question the relationship between ornamentation and queer desire. Drawing from gendered traditions of needlework of embroidery, my practice is invested in exploring this shift between function and adornment, the tendency to misuse that which is intrinsic to this perennial material. I am also looking at mesh fabric as a queer way of thinking, informing notions such as permeability, sameness, structures and systems and eroticism.