Submitted by: Allison Kotzig
Materials: Found bones, hemp twine
This piece brings together so many of my feelings and impressions about this pandemic. Firstly and most obviously is the bones themselves. death, mystery, lonely forests, plague carts, mass graves.
That they are knitted together, each to the other: we are all vulnerable to this virus, some more than others due to social and racial injustice. Also that as a society, the health of one of us is tied to the rest and if one gets sick we all get sick.
The raft started during the process of making a Plague Rug. But as I was knitting the cords bind the bones together I felt like I was lashing together a raft. A raft made of bones. an attempt to escape this plague using the broken bodies of others. Using their bones to try to float away, but the bones just sink. It’s not possible to disconnect from nature, from society to create conditions of suffering and plague and then try to escape.
As well it speaks to the destruction of the natural world for profit and where it has left us. The bone raft is big enough for me to sit on cross-legged, about 90 x 75 cms.