Stitching the Gaze: Meaning and Affect in Caroline McQuarrie’s Swerve

• Main Author: Ish Doney
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de Los Andes 2020-01-01
• Series: Hart
• Subjects: embroidery; photography; embodiment; affect; spectatorship
• Online Access: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/doi/full/10.25025/hart06.2020.06

Western art history has long been centred around sign-based readings. In the last few decades, theories of affect and embodiment have begun to challenge this ocularcentrism, bringing the spectator’s body into the equation. This article will focus on New Zealand artist Caroline McQuarrie’s (1975-) series Swerve (2009), in which McQuarrie altered vernacular photographs taken from her own family albums by stitching directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper, and image. I will undertake a close reading of this work, informed by theories of family photography, craft, and affect and embodiment in other mediums, in order to investigate how these objects might be understood by reading both for meaning and for feeling.