Folio is a section bridging the printed page with unexpected media, hosted by a different artist or curator each issue. In this issue, Ottawa-based multidisciplinary artist Sarah Joworski collects different strains of recent work.
growing and growing includes selections from different, but concurrent bodies of my work — some embroidery and some “pysanky,” the 2000 year old Ukrainian tradition of painting eggs. I use my artwork as a way to push the limits of these traditional techniques, and in doing so, of the coded feminine symbolism they employ.
Through pysanky I juxtapose a more modern view of womanhood against traditional Ukrainian imagery. Many traditional symbols link femininity with purity, virtue, and fertility, while symbols of strength, victory and leadership are coded as masculine.
My photo embroidery pieces develop my own queer ecology via the symbolism of body hair and weeds. The material and subject matter both blur the line between “boy” and “girl,” interrogating how beautiful beings come to be labelled as unwanted or undesireable.
Sarah Jaworski is a non-binary Canadian artist working in Ottawa, Ontario. Jaworski’s work blurs the lines of traditional gender roles, using a range of media including photo-embroidery, printmaking, and pysanky, the Ukrainian tradition of painted eggs.