This article examines how weaving mediates grief through the transformation of garments belonging to the deceased. It focuses on the practice of Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist Mary Burgess and her project Woven Memories , revealing how clothing operates as a potent mnemonic object – at once a site of comfort, confrontation and emotional ambiguity for the grieving. The article considers how garments become ‘what-if’ objects that hold imagined returns, how certain items remain too laden with memory for disassembly, and how others can be materially reconfigured to sustain continuity and hope. By foregrounding labour, intimacy and affect in the making process, Burgess’s work challenges dominant narratives of fashion’s ephemerality and disposability, proposing instead that garments can sustain emotional afterlives beyond the wearer’s death. Ultimately, this text proposes Woven Memories as a practice that not only repurposes textiles but also reworks the relationship between death, memory and dress, revealing how fashion might continue to live meaningfully in the wake of loss.
Xingyun Shen (Wed,) studied this question.