Jenny Peterson
Unravel
2020
Time is a concept which often consumes my everyday thoughts. I frequently think about how time can pass at different speeds and how that passed time can be measured in units as small as seconds and days to units as great as years and decades. I think about how time is relative; how no one truly experiences the concept of time in identical ways. I think about how time is considered by many to be a complex illusion but yet, is so vital to our way of life. Our world revolves around time.
The emergence of the novel coronavirus has significantly altered my perception of time. As I, and most of the world, am adjusting to this new, distanced way of life, my awareness of time feels as if it is slowly unraveling. As the structure I once had to my days starts to disintegrate, I begin to lose my grasp on time. I feel like I am watching time being slowly thrown away and I have very little power to save it. By utilizing neutral-colored yarn of various textures and thicknesses and an assortment of silver chains, I created this weaving entitled “Unravel” to conceptualize my current relationship with time whilst observing and experiencing the devastating effects of the coronavirus. I destroyed sections of this weaving to represent my fear of the effects of the coronavirus gradually unraveling and dismantling the world we once lived in. Similar to the impossibility of trying to piece back together and replicate a time before coronavirus, once parts of my weaving had been deconstructed it was impossible to fix.