In Control

Katrina Majkut

On View: March 9 - May 5, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 2024 (12-4 p.m.)

My artwork in the series, In Control rejects the stereotypical domestic functionality of samplers. Historically, embroidery prepared women for marriage. Samplers represented domestic skill levels and specific cultural and religious values to potential husbands who sought a woman with the right skills to establish a household – make clothes, darn socks. Cross-stitch was used to advertise and represent specific identities related to womanhood, wifedom and motherhood but bodily functions, autonomy and diverse lifestyles were not represented in this textile practice even if they were essential to those roles. The “domestic craft” of In Control attempts to directly challenge this by stitching all products related to (but not limited to) women’s health and needs, family planning, and the body with a fully comprehensive, bipartisan and medically honest approach.

As straightforward still lives, the artworks examine their objective commercial packaging against their too-often subjective, weighted political underpinnings. Until the invention of the pill, women were expected to only have children within marriage and a wife’s sole purpose was to bear children and then take care of them in the home. Women needed a way to control their reproductive lives in order to manage their physical and financial health, education and the demands of domestic drudgery. Conversely, the U.S. has historically used birth control in class and race wars particularly as a ploy of eugenics and neo-colonialism. Prior to its release in 1960, pharmaceutical companies tested The Pill on Puerto Rican prisoners and farm laborers. Both abroad in the United States, government and non-government institutions promoted birth control as a method to minimize population booms among the lower classes. Even in the 20th century U.S., it was common for single mothers of color to be sterilized against their consent or knowledge after giving birth. Today, with the constant debate over Roe v. Wade, tightening abortion clinic rules and the attacks on Planned Parenthood funding access and usage is a polarized issue, rendering access to safe abortion and women’s healthcare a service for only the privileged few. The historical use and understanding of birth control and fair access to it has never been evenly distributed between people of different race, class, education and profession. By using art to stitch every modern product, I hope to address how complicated and diverse women’s needs are, to open a safe space where women can share their personal stories and needs and to highlight the impact of institutionalized regulation and control.

The contrast between the historical domestic cross-stitch, its implied gender role and women’s actual birth control/health needs lies at the heart of why women’s reproductive rights are still a hot topic issue – reproductive health is still not wholly considered appropriate in such a feminine and domestic sphere. This explains why as writer, Jay Michaelson put it, “Sandra Fluke, was shamed as a slut for defending the right to control her body.” Even the Hobby Lobby US Supreme Court case, shows that even a for-profit business can have more say in a woman’s access to healthcare than the woman herself.

My creation process relies on feminist intersectionalism, collaboration and narrative storytelling with patrons in order to expand the collection and my own limited personal perspective. I specifically call this Boomerang Intersectionalism. It starts with the feminist concept of “the personal is political, but then removes the personal from a topic/object and focuses on the object that was initially made personal. While the artwork formally moves away from the “personal is political,” as a result more people are able to access, assert, and share their own personal experiences and identity. This makes the artwork more inclusive and accessible to a wider audience as opposed to artwork that promotes a single narrative. In effect, the artwork then returns and widens the concept of the “personal is political.” My approach also seeks to push the formal boundaries of the thread medium by utilizing observational painting techniques and found objects, which I hope will further detached it from low-end craft stereotypes. Through the cross-stitches of In Control, I want to highlight how social history and practices have eradicated the understanding of women’s medical needs in light of domestic practices, to focus on ideas of what it means to be a modern woman today and to maintain but modernize this historical craft practice. I believe this way, my artwork is a unique political and artistic platform for education, empathy, listening, and an agent for change.

 In Control Artist Talk

with artist Katrina Majkut, Curator Dr. Adrienne Kochman, and Marketing Consultant Alexandra Senycia