Spinner,Mother,Goddess

For a long time,fiber art and female has been “naturally” connected.It is not difficult to find that over the development history of fiber art,female artists have been far more active than male artists.There is also extensive connection between the materials and techniques used in fibre art and the traditional needlework.Since the 1970 s,contemporary female art pioneers such as Judi Chicago and Miriam Shapiro have made statements on women's rights with fiber works,which has made fiber art more closely related to women.This paper attempts to build broader perspectives for the topic of "fiber art and women"-through taking fiber art as an integral part of human cultural production and thus starting from the perspective of cultural history,to reexamine and reanalyze the strongly stable relationship between “fiber art and female” by referring to texts and analysis on “spinning – female” in different cultural backgrounds and ideologies and based on analysis methodologies and theoretical results in art theory,Iconography,psychology and semiology.Through tracking the three typical female images closely related to textile(textile fabrics),namely,“spinner”,“mother” and “goddess”,the current paper intends to analyze the generation and evolvement of those feminine myths that have been deeply rooted in textile culture of China and the West from the perspectives of technique,emotion and prototype,and therefore to further reflect how contemporary fiber art is impacted by this symbolic system with gender implication and how the creative context of fiber art is constituted.The first chapter Spinner: Gender Division of Labor in Textile Technology looks into the objective discussions on women issues involved in fiber art from technical perspective.The gender division of labor in weaving activities over a long period of time also exists in fiber art.Among different creative contexts,the gendered techniques have provided different semantic effects.The second chapter Mother: Emotional Metaphor in Fiber Art analyzes the relationship between “textile fabrics” and “mother”,the special female identity,and the atmosphere created by emotional factors embedded in such relationship.Artists based on their personal experiences had responded differently to this topic.As such,they provided us subjective discussions on fiber art and feminine myths.In the third chapter Goddess: Psychological Prototype of Gender Symbols in Fiber Art,goddesses related to spinning in different cultures have built an archaic but abstract original gender mentality in the aspect of psychological symbolization,thus further enhanced the relationship between fiber art and female in the aspect of prototype.This paper does not intend to draw a clear and accurate outline for the relationship between fiber art and female.On the contrary,it would rather portray such relationship as an abundant,complex and changing reality and therefore providing a more open space for fiber art studies creative practice.