I smuggle feminist resistance into the domestic and the decorative, using textiles and digital media as Trojan horses. 

My multi-disciplinary practice responds to the contemporary global climate, specifically the ‘backlash against women’s rights’ identified in the UN Women 2024 Report. Motivated by the tension between hard-won progress and resurgent conservative ‘family value’ narratives, I centre my work on matrilineal storytelling as a form of cultural resistance.

Inspired by Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, I construct ‘worlds-within-worlds’: immersive installations where past and future matrilineal conversations can be imagined, alongside participatory events that enable people to meet and share stories in real life. These spaces are shaped through the deliberate juxtaposition of material and mediated forms. Drawing on textiles, moving-image practices, and evolving digital processes, I explore how different modes of making can hold memory, care, and contradiction simultaneously.

My methodology is rooted in fourth-wave feminism and intersectionality. I view storytelling as a rigorous research tool, capable of revealing truths that traditional analysis often overlooks. Through practice-led research, I treat the act of ‘making’ as a form of ‘thinking’.

As a facilitator and custodian of communal memory, I extend this research into the public sphere. I investigate how heterotopian settings can function as sites for the recovery of overlooked narratives, working collaboratively to bridge the gap between archival history and lived experience. My goal is to sustain a socially engaged practice that supports communities in reclaiming their stories through the interplay of matrilineal and intergenerational forms of knowledge, such as oral history and textile practices, and evolving forms of cultural production.

Sharon Douglas