Description
Everyday people make things to represent, reflect on, and make sense of the world around them. They tell stories through these things that they make, including stories of genocide, of loss, of displacement, of identity, and of environmental destruction. These things represent creative output, or art: people embroider their stories on fabric, they paint them, they make them out of clay, and they represent them in music and dance. In this paper, I look at three different kinds of everyday art(efacts) – textiles, ceramics and jewellery – and I explore the potential of these media to act as means of telling human rights stories. In doing so, I consider the ways in which these artefacts subvert expectations around human rights narratives and stress the importance of taking into account the artefactuality, or the ‘thinginess’ of these artforms.
Keywords: Textiles, ceramics, jewellery, human rights, world politics.
Bio: Caitlin Hamilton is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Gender, Justice and Security at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include everyday world politics, creative methods, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda.
