Patterns for Freedom: Sewing and State Socialism

• In Event: Late/Post-Soviet Media Networks and Gender Technologies

Abstract

Sewing patterns are a fascinating media object: blending text, diagrams, and material engagement (cutting, taping, folding, etc.) they guide users into making and modifying new physical objects; they connect design to material labor that intimately interacts with the body; they disseminate and serve as archives of cultural and technical knowledge; and they are a media form deeply entangled with gender, class, and labor histories. Moreover, stories of emancipated seamstresses are central to socialist imaginaries of gender and class-based revolution. From Chernyshevsky to contemporary Ukrainian feminist protest art—with interstices of avant-garde patterns, military uniforms, Soviet underground culture attire, etc.—this project tries to unearth a different narrative about emancipatory cultural productions and the Soviet century, seen from the perspective of women who sew.

Author

• Marijeta Bozovic, Yale U