PRICK & STITCH

Prick and Stitch is a collaborative project devised by artists Denise de Cordova and Kate Davis. The project developed out of on-going conversations exploring notions of pricking and stitching as common processes present in their respective works.

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To Prick –

Is to pierce - to puncture - perforate - rupture... If you like, you can use a knife, a fork, a stick, a pin - the beauty of this game lays within your freedom.

 

To Prick –

To deturpate, erase - damage a surface. Pricking is to create an incision or, in another prospective, is to leave a mark.

 

To prick is to assert space where before there was none - by stumping your foot on the ground, and saying: “Here is the dimension in which I exist”.

 

Pricking comes from nothing, or in better words, it comes from establishing that a something is needed.

 

Such an action comes from there being no space at all - a white smooth piece of continuous paper ruptures into a new dimensionality.

 

Is more than ‘making a hole’ - is about creating space - where before there was none. Is about embodying resolution - initiating creative action - by breaking a uniform surface. Pricking is political.

 

Pricking is when space comes to be erected - vertically - by the action of the pin coming down to pierce - like a guillotine. Implacable, but softly piercing the surface at its meeting point of resistance.

 

To Stitch -

Is to make mend - join - linking by bringing two surfaces together... If you like, you can use a needle, a stick, thread - the beauty of this game lays within your freedom.

 

To Stitch -

To bring together - to make ends meet.

 

Repair - knitting or crocheting or embroidery. A Seam or a surface?

 

Stitching is to allow the emergence of a surface, where before there was an empty space surrounded by disembodied fragments. Is to make body.

 

Creating body - where before was just a flood of thread. To create connection - and to join the seems - is in the space of intimacy and in the desire to create linked multitudes.

 

Stitching is the establishment of a connection, the creation of a new space, but this time is a space which brings together. Stitching is political too.

 

Stitching is when space lays down - horizontally - stretching over and in between the seams and loops of thread. Space is the result of the gathering of all scattered fragments, mended together, patiently folding, morphing into body.

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Text by Maria Antonia Positano de Vincentiis