Knitting the in_visible: data-driven craftivism as feminist resistance

Abstract

Feminist scholars are drawing attention to how conventional forms of data representation fail to make visible the experiences of women and marginalized communities. While the problem of reinscribing the in_visibility of already under-visualized communities (and crises) is being acknowledged from a data science perspective, little attention is being paid to how craft redresses these issues of visibility. ‘Craftivism’, or the move towards activist craft, resists both the in_visibility of the form and of the labour that produces it. This essay examines two specific craftivism projects driven by data: Stitching the Curve, a year-long stitched pandemic data project, and the Tempestry Project, which represents climate change data through knitting. Drawing on Andre Brock’s critical technocultural discourse analysis as a methodology to understand how these craftivist data visualizations circulate on social media, we argue that in their form and their content, craftivist data visualizations redress what Perez terms the ‘gender data gap’ through embracing a feminist ethos. These projects offer an essential space for understanding craft’s potential for resistance, modelling the inherent subversion of employing the ‘feminine’ textile as a site for feminist visualization and meaning-making, while also subject to the same challenges as craft itself – dismissal, marginalization and in_visibility.

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