Update on ‘Stitched Together’, VE Memorial Day Project

Spike Print Studio intended to mark VE Day (8^th May) this year with a contemplative, interactive installation led by our current Peter Reddick Bursary Award recipient, Prerna Chandiramani.

Finding inspiration in handwritten letters from home, Prerna expresses her experience of displacement by exploring the materiality of paper.

Prerna uses handprinted papers for folding sometimes incorporating thread /stitch. The folds record her response to the sensitivity and intensity of the content of her letters. These are then translated into prints with the performative element of folding becoming an incremental part of the print process. Language becomes the memory and the folds hold these memories of loved ones lost, separated or afar.

We took this interactive idea online and through Instagram, Prerna invited others to take part in this opportunity to express previously unspoken thoughts and feelings by manipulating a piece of paper-the container of these memories to hold them safe, unseen but not unnoticed.

Prerna received many images from around the world which will be on exhibition in our virtual online gallery which is currently being built.

Prerna is currently responding to these images sent to her by drawing, interpreting and eventually laser cutting to realise her finished work and bring her Peter Reddick Bursary Award to its conclusion. Through printmaking and adding her own folds, Prerna is interacting with these folded memories thereby making an emotional bond that’s stitched together with common human emotions of grief, loss and separation. This will be displayed in our online gallery and in a physical space when the time is right.