Roots Are Radical. Activist Embroidery in Central Europe

The traditional technique of embroidery has earned a significant position among the media of activist art and creative activism (craftivism) in the past two decades. It has also become one of the popular “slow” activities shared in communities that support community building. Examples of such activities, located in the Central European region that is defined by stances and ideas in interconnected cultures rather than by mere geographic proximity, may not be numerous. Nevertheless, they prove to be relevant for an enquiry into the phenomenon. This phenomenon has been researched mainly by Western scholars so far; only recently were they joined by a few scholars who come from and focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Taking the prevalence of cultural history and feminist perspective into account, this paper suggests a shift of approach by analysing the semiotic and multimodal aspects of the issue. The focus will be on the concurrence of iconicity and symbolism of the traditional patterns and newly introduced ones, on transmediations of narrative structures into embroidered representations, and on the multimodality of communication. The multimodal approach appears necessary due to the paradoxical relation between the materiality of the original media product and the immateriality of its media of display and distribution, typically social media. The characteristics and communicational potential of embroideries will be exemplified by the individual project “Vyzhyvanka” by Rufina Bazlova, a Prague-based, Belarus-born visual artist, and by the collective creations of the Slovak craftivist group, the KundyCrew.