KAT HOWARD
2018
Silk worm cocoons, hand-woven linen
30″ x 32″

To create “Colony Collapse,” poet and fiber artist Kat Howard dyed and bisected hundreds of empty silk worm cocoons, attaching them one by one to an oval of hand-woven linen. The result is incredibly magnetic—the subtle descent of the open cocoons, and the blue-black depth of color, draws one inevitably closer.

Howard draws from the history–both personal and political–of the oppression of women. She explores the idea of the body as a vessel for trauma, using a multitude of fibers to abstract this idea, but also to create its tactile expression. “Colony Collapse” describes the systematic persecution of matriarchal communities throughout history, and the larger destruction man’s obsessive violence wreaks upon nature.