Finding My Place

This work challenges conventional ideas of motherhood through a creative response to the realities of infertility. Exploring hidden shame, isolation, social exclusions and grief. The quiet weight of lost experiences and unfulfilled hopes, inviting reflection on the  unseen narratives that define the other, often unspoken and silent space where motherhood’s absence is equally defining.

Finding My Place reimagines the language of merit patches, traditionally stitched emblems of belonging and achievement. These rugs explore the invisible or unwanted “clubs” of identity and experience. The act of tufting itself also carries symbolic reference to the process of IVF which is a cycle of precision, patience, yet driven by hope and perseverance. 
 
This artwork was developed in close collaboration with the talented Alena at ‘Manchester Tufting Workshops’, whose generosity in subsidising part of the work made these pieces possible. Her experience and care enabled me to deepen my understanding of tufting not only as a craft technique but as a symbolic, sentimental and emotive language within contemporary practice.