Dismantling colonial structures everyday as a designer and a woman in the world. Practice first, theory later
Robert Billings, Woman Warrior Mother & Queen, 2012-2016
Musings on practical, everyday ways to decolonise. It’s a verb not a noun.
Question the hierarchy’s of your own chosen profession. For me that is architecture but I also question hierarchies in our food and fashion industries. Acknowledge your participation in said hierarchy’s. There is a hierarchy in architecture between the ‘designer’ and the ‘maker’. Architects today are no longer masters of a particular craft as we used to be. We cannot be everything. I don’t believe in technological fixes, alone, to ‘fix’ colonisation. As a designer I’m interested in paying more reverence for the craft for the making, this is not formulaic. This could mean greater active collaboration between designer and maker, it could mean getting your hands dirty. After 7 years of studying architecture I didn’t know how to dismantle a simple wooden garden shed. I’m not ashamed to say this. This discovery came to me on an allotment site north of Dublin, deep in the winter of 2019. More learning was required. More practical life experience. Also women can grow up to be completely sheltered from experiencing practical DIY. I ended up on a building course in west Clare with Harrison Gardner, learning how to make windows, gabion foundations filled with natural local stone (a great alternative to concrete) and probably more about how buildings get built than 7 years in architectural school.
Living in Portugal in the summer of 2022, I rediscovered my love of clothes and celebrating female beauty.. I learned how to design and sew a pair of shorts, a top from reused cotton bedsheets. Natural Dyeing and transforming 2nd hand fabrics into beautiful garments, it’s a joyful practice.
Wearing whatever I want to & embracing personal adornment.
Becoming a noble steward of my own material and financial resources, and how I recirculate them. Refusing to play the victim and take full accountability. Trying to stop preaching / judging others in relation to money - how it’s earned and how it’s spent.
Buying chemical free food directly from the farmer.
Practicing alternative ways of architecture —> redesigning exploitative colonial land structures, our shared collective property system, our shared collective wealth, how we own the earth as a collective.
Attuning to my intuition and how I actually feel about things. Stop stuffing feelings and gut instincts down. Act accordingly even if the world around me and doctors and governments tell me to do what they think is best. I’ve learned the hard way from ignoring my intuition. Big life lessons.
Becoming aware of deeply held unconscious beliefs woman can hold in the psyche around power, money (that only men are the vehicles for this and we can only access this through them) that can limit us.
Just ordered the book The image versus the alphabet by Leonard Schlain, recommended by psychological astrologer Danielle Beinstein. I hope it can help me to embrace imaging making and the visual arts in a deeper way and to reveal connections between female beauty and decolonising.
Taking play (music festivals, surfing, art, generally having more fun) seriously in life and work.
