Women speaking through embroidery: using visual methods and poetry to narrate lived experiences

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article aims to highlight the ways in which visual methods can be used to narrate lived experiences. Additionally, I also draw from self-written poetry as a way to speak to the embroideries and using poems as a form of alternative analysis that assist in interpreting the embroideries. I embarked on a research project where I used embroidery as a visual methodological tool wherein participants could narrate their stories visually, as a way to shift from solely relying on text and the spoken language. The aim was to highlight various ways in which stories could be told and, commensurately, an acknowledgment of multiple forms of knowledge production is made manifest. The findings and various interpretations of the embroideries have been published elsewhere (see Segalo 2011, 2014, 2016; Segalo, Manoff & Fine 2015). On the basis of the foregoing, I argue that platforms need to be created wherein the academic space and ways in which information and knowledge are presented become open to multiple forms of representation.