Julie Gladstone

Four Corners, Four Angels, Ten Stones, Ten Veils

Using textiles, embroidery patterns and knitting as text, these pieces tell stories about birth, death, exile, diaspora, motherhood and the creation of personal rituals to recover from ancestral trauma, colonial violence, patriarchal narratives and disembodiment.The Sephardi women in the Ottoman empire from who I descend on my matrilineal line, offer a model for resistance, innovation and resilience in the face of adversity and oppression from within their own patriarchal communities. From within the confines of the domestic space and despite restrictions which barred them from learning to read, learning sacred language and entry into the public sphere, these women invented rituals, creative practices, folk songs, original prayer compositions, and folk healing methods. Inspired by their example, my research is about claiming agency to re-interpret and adapt Jewish ritual, tapping into its hidden mystical, embodied and shamanic roots, to address contemporary questions and personal narratives that need healing. The domestic and cyclical methodology and critical framework of my work emerged out of the restrictions I experienced as as a new mother during the COVID 19 pandemic working primarily in fragments of time while my daughters was napping. This series of embroidered and knit garments were inspired by a methodology called “Wandering Textiles”, a term coined by scholar Mikal Held, to describe the process used by Sephardi women in which they created ceremonial textiles by repurposing and stitching together remnants of domestic fabrics such as pilllows, bedspreads and clothing. There is a concept called “Tikkun Olam” that translates from Hebrew as “to repair the world”.   I’m reclaiming the term Tikkun as the basis for a research methodology that is rooted in healing ancestral trauma through creative practice. Through the interdisciplinary combination of knitting, embroidery, walking, relationship building with rivers, singing, dreaming, performance and video editing, this work images into being metaphysical time travel in which tikkun (healing) across multiple time frames and spaces is possible, and considers what kind of stories are worth transmitting to the next generation.

“Dear daughter, when you were a few months old, my mother took me into the spare room, which was my childhood bedroom when I was growing up.  She opened up the drawer of the wooden chest and took out a few folded garments that she wanted me to inherit.  There was a cream coloured Spanish silk shawl with long fringes and a finely embroidered floral pattern.  There was also a whitework, embroidered linen tablecloth, and a delicate lace circle like a magical spider web. All of these pieces were handmade by my great-grandmother Julie Bejarano who embroidered and made lace while she sang ancient Ladino folk songs on the balcony.   Wandering Textiles:  Stitching Knitting into Abstract PaintingAfter you were born, knitting became a way for me to work in the short windows that I found while you were napping.  I developed a new way to think through the construction of an abstract composition, one that was based on pre-making knitted shapes and colour swatches; arranging them into a composition after they were all made.  I could create a soft pile of different coloured shapes and then weave them together to create knitted paintings. We are here now (Photo series) I am the ambassador, draping embroidered tablecloths and shawls that you made by hand over one side of my body. On the other side is the land and the water. Though we come from a history of wandering and exile, Iet us come into relationship and conversation with this land here, where I was born and where my daughter was born. This series of gestures and photos uses the idea of Tikkun Olam (healing and repair) embodiment acheived by stiching together two pieces to create something whole. The textile sitched together with the land. A sacred ceremonial carrying case, a type of tabernacle, stitching together textile with land.  My body becomes the talisman,  contained within this ceremonial joining. We live here now.Cemetery Story We go to the buried cemetery on our last day in Béjar, the village from where our ancestors were exiled in 1492. It used to be the Jewish cemetery,  but now there is a church built on top. I peer into the fountain attached to the church as I fill my water bottle, I look down and see two dead birds floating in the water:  a mother and a baby. We walk around to the back of the church to the quiet courtyard.  Your father films me as I crouch on the ground gathering dirt into a ziplock bag. I feel like I’m gathering the bones and ashes of our ancestors into a little plastic urn that I will smuggle back to Canada with me.  This pillow case is a resting place for them now.  I have created 10 pockets to represent the 10 Sephirot, the 10 emanations of God as represented in the Kabbalah Tree of Life.  Each white square is a pocket that is embroidered with a pattern I created based on combining observation of a stone in my collection with a cut-work embroidery pattern from one of my inherited tablecloths. The stones are the stones of respect we place on the graves of our ancestors. The white squares represent the cobblestones that pave the buried cemetery in Béjar with moss stitching around the edges.  The whole thing is stitched onto a pillow and pillow case creating another pocket for a satchel of moss collected from the Moss Man parade.  The words of the Ladino lullaby Durmé Durmé are painted onto the bottom pocket, which represents the Shekinah, the dwelling place of the Divine Feminine  which is also where a satchel of dirt from the cemetery is held now, a peaceful, dignified resting place within a fitting ceremonial textile.  The entire textile operates as an amulet bag, a portable, nomadic tombstone, a gateway to the divine as well as a place to rest your head in exile.  The Legend of the Moss Man As the legend goes, a group of Christian knights camouflaged themselves from head to toe in moss that they had collected from the forest. Thus disguised they waited silently in the mountains to reconquer the village. At dawn, they stealthily made their way towards the fortress.   The guards upon seeing these strange creatures, fled in utter terror upon seeing what appeared to be large green monsters wielding  clubs approaching the gates.”