Exposing What’s on the Inside: Fiber Art for Understanding and Healing

Abstract

While conducting a parent-child autoethnography to understand my own white children’s conceptions of race and my attempts to enact an antiracist home curriculum, I worried about how the work would be received. I listened to my body and mind’s desire to stitch and created a series of fiber design pieces I titled, Exposing What’s on the Inside. Through the act of making, my initial metaphor evolved to become an exposure of under layers surrounded by scabbing that ultimately leads to healing. This artful inquiry helped me understand that making myself vulnerable to critique is a painful and necessary part of disrupting the racial status quo.