This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
Chrissie Freeth
No Longer Mourn
2016
Cotton warp, hand-dyed woollen weft
0.82m x 1.16m
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I have sought a more organic and expressive way to weave this tapestry and the techniques developed have informed much of my subsequent work. My brother was killed in 2000, just after I finished my PhD in palaeopathology, the study of human remains. As well as plummeting into several years of depression, I lost the will to work again in the field and career I had been working towards since a teenager. I floundered for a long time and it was not until I began weaving that I re-found my place and sense of purpose. Inevitably I wanted to explore these aspects of survival and rebirth through tapestry. No Longer Mourn is the result. The figure is shown sinking into the blackness but also, read differently, is emerging from it. It is an image of hope, not despair. It takes its title from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71.