Artist's Statement

For the past several years I have been collecting / mistranslating signage from antiquities museums then reinstalling it elsewhere. These phrases, translated through Container’s signature style into cross-stitched pillow kits, now read suggestively in our domestic scenes, I think. To pair fragments displaced from mysterious thousands-years-old objects onto the everyday textiles we lay our heads on implies we gather centuries of broken, forgetful thought in our rooms. And that we can still name/misname our dreams as arriving from an ancient, unknown world to both comfort and disturb our bodies.

Cross-stitch kits were the inexpensive gifts / time-users grandmothers once thrust into children’s hands as a way to keep them still. The act of cross-stitching is easy, then, but also profound–x marks each spot. I like to picture the phrases randomly and multiply thrown onto furniture and beds. To me they combine Container’s signature witty elegance with the tug of something dream/dark.

About the Object

In the crossed world of animals is published as a limited series of six cross-stitch pillow kits featuring phrases the author collected from antiquities museums. A total of 60 kits (10 for each of the six phrases featured) will be available for purchase as part of the series.

Each kit contains materials to make a 16″x10″ throw pillow, including:

• A printed pattern
• Colored, 14-count Aida cloth
• Black and white DMC embroidery floss
• A 6" embroidery hoop
• Cotton fabric for the pillowcase backing
• Thread to attach the pillowcase backing

Note: Customers are responsible for purchasing their own pillow form. We recommend an 18″x12″ pillow insert, which can be procured inexpensively on Amazon and other retailers.

About the artist

Terri Witek is the author of 6 books of poems, most recently The Rape Kit, winner of the 2017 Slope Editions Prize judged by Dawn Lundy Martin. Her poetry often traces the breakages between words and images and has been included in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Slate, Poesia Visual, Versal, and many other journals and anthologies.

She has collaborated with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes cyriacolopes.com since 2005–their works together include museum and gallery shows, performance and site-specific projects featured internationally in New York, Seoul, Miami, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro. Collaborations with digital artist Matt Roberts mattroberts.com use augmented reality technology for smartphones to poetically map cities and have been featured in Matanza (Colombia), Glasgow, Vancouver, Lisbon, Miami, Santa Fe and Orlando.

Witek directs Stetson’s undergraduate creative program and with Lopes teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas. To learn more, visit terriwitek.com.