Re-imagining Our World

During the extraordinary period triggered by the Coronavirus, Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen focussed on activating creative practices as a positive source for direction.

To mark this time they created four ‘text blankets’, tactile artefacts that record a range of experiences. The blankets harness hopes, fears and aspirations expressed by friends of The Museum of Loss and Renewal around the world during the Covid-19 period. 

Since the mid 1990s Tracy has been making ‘text blankets’ in bespoke public studios, commissioned by art organisations, and did so during her collaborative practice with Edwin Janssen (- 2023).

Each blanket has the same underlying focus: hand-made on site, extracts of conversations (face-to-face and online) are cut as fabric letters and applied to the woollen surface, slowly revealing ideas and opinions about e.g. belonging, attachment and memory in Tokyo; how a ‘soft city’ might be understood by its inhabitants as the fluid and impressionistic spaces between architectural exteriors in Birmingham; the state of Scottish identity at the time of the opening of the Scottish Parliament.

The hand-cutting of the texts in fabric, and tacking these to the surface of each blanket is a slow, laborious, thought-provoking process. Deceleration is enriching, and produces profound moments of exchange, triggered by the content gifted from their far-flung friends. The combined excerpts come to represent a range of voices, creating a ‘portrait’ of the impact of Covid-19. 

When the hand-work processes are complete, the blankets are expertly needle-punched by designer Ingrid Tait on her bespoke industrial machine in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. Tracy finishes the needle-punched blankets by hand, and they are then often sent from contributor to contributor to use for a period of time as each pleases.