Not Just Surface: Conceptualizing Artful Inquiry via Embroidery

Abstract

In this article, I conceptualize artful inquiry by answering the question, “What sort of movement does it, as a mode of inquiry, evoke, manifest, or set to work?” Stitching-with embroidery, theorizations of tension and surface, feminist critiques of the art/craft divide, and discussions of methodological (dis)alignment and (dis)coherence in qualitative inquiry, I argue that artful inquiry is—like embroidery—particularly tensile. Although, in the end, I leave the work ‘unfinished’ (e.g., keeping the messy back visible and the product/process ‘open’), I suggest several things. That, because of its materialities and rhythms—which necessitate and cultivate relationships of, with/in and across difference—embroidery can be particularly useful for making sense of artful inquiry. That, whatever else it is characterized by, artful inquiry is a tensile performance of (in)separability and (dis)connection. And, that engaging with artful inquiry in this manner can attune us to how we work relations of (dis)alignment and (dis)coherence across (qualitative) research design and practice.