The significant object: The artistic imaginary of Madeira Island embroidery

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on the way in which the memory of the disappearance of embroidery – as a manufacturing activity and, as a consequence, as the genus of social fabric and socio-economic relations – fosters the construction of a local identity and feeds the creation of a new symbolic language. I analyse how the division between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘contemporary’ is the result of a western culture that creates a sharp divide in time wherein everything that precedes it is in the past, and therefore fixed. Following this line of thought, craftsmanship has been associated with the traditional (i.e. unchanging), and art or design with the contemporary. By mapping the evolution of the Madeiran embroidery imaginary, I argue that this division is a historical construct. Seeing the embroidery as both an art and a craft enables a process of reinterpretation and invention, which enhances the creation of new imaginaries and alternative futures.