AS FOUND

appropriation has long been understood as a critical method within contemporary art, a way of working with pre‑existing materials to expose the cultural, economic, and ideological systems that shape them. while early discussions often centered on mass‑media imagery and questions of authorship, appropriation has expanded into a broader theoretical field concerned with how meaning circulates, how value is assigned, and how power is embedded in everyday objects.

my own practice approaches appropriation through the lens of domestic materiality. the fabrics, images, and objects i work with are not neutral; they are carriers of memory, gendered labor, and cultural history. they come to me already shaped by use, wear, and care. in this sense, my work aligns with a lineage of artists and thinkers who treat the everyday not as raw material but as a site of cultural critique.

the "as found" and the ethics of existing materials

alison and peter smithson’s notion of the “as found” — articulated in their mid‑century architectural writing and exhibitions, offers a crucial theoretical bridge. the smithsons argued for an aesthetic and ethical attention to materials as they are encountered in the world, with their histories, imperfections, and embedded social meanings intact. rather than idealizing or transforming materials into something new, the “as found” insists on recognizing the cultural conditions that produced them.

this concept resonates deeply with appropriation. both approaches reject the idea of the pristine, the original, the untouched. both foreground the already‑made as a legitimate and potent site of artistic inquiry. and both understand that materials carry social information - that they are shaped by forces of labor, class, gender, and use.

in my textile practice, the “as found” becomes a way of acknowledging the politics of domestic materials. the fabrics i use are not simply aesthetic choices; they are artifacts of lived experience. they bear traces of domestic economies, personal histories, and cultural hierarchies. by incorporating them into my work, i am not merely borrowing - i am activating the histories they contain.

appropriation as feminist critique

feminist theorists have long argued that domestic labor and craft traditions have been systematically undervalued within dominant cultural narratives. appropriation, when applied to domestic materials, becomes a method for revaluing these forms of labor. it exposes the gendered assumptions that separate “art” from “craft,” “public” from “private,” “high culture” from “everyday life.”

by working with found fabrics, i am engaging in a form of feminist appropriation that challenges these hierarchies. the domestic sphere - often imagined as apolitical - becomes a site of cultural and ideological tension. the materials themselves become evidence of the structures that shape everyday life.

counter‑archiving and the politics of memory

appropriation also functions as a form of counter‑archiving. dominant culture preserves certain histories while erasing others; domestic materials often fall into the latter category. by gathering, preserving, and recontextualizing these fragments, i am constructing an alternative archive, one built from the overlooked, the discarded, the intimate.

this aligns with contemporary theories of memory that emphasize fragmentation, layering, and non‑linear narrative. the quilt becomes a structure for holding multiple temporalities at once: the past life of the fabric, the moment of its reuse, and the new meaning created through its juxtaposition with other materials.

circulation, value, and cultural critique

rauschenberg’s use of mass‑media imagery revealed how images circulate through culture, flattening distinctions and producing new forms of meaning. in my work, circulation happens through domestic life: what is saved, what is discarded, what becomes precious, what becomes invisible. these flows reveal their own systems of value, their own hierarchies, their own politics.

appropriation, in this context, becomes a method for making visible the cultural weight of everyday materials. it exposes the quiet power structures embedded in the things we live with, the fabrics that touch our bodies, the objects that shape our routines, the images that anchor our memories.

toward an ethics of the already‑made

to work with found materials is to acknowledge that culture is not built from scratch. it is inherited, accumulated, layered. the “as found” offers a framework for understanding this inheritance not as limitation but as possibility. appropriation becomes a way of thinking critically about the world through the materials it leaves behind.

my quilts are not simply compositions; they are arguments. they insist that domestic materials carry cultural significance. they propose that the everyday is a site of power. they suggest that the act of gathering, stitching, and recontextualizing can be a form of critique. appropriation, for me, is not a strategy of borrowing but a method of unsettling — a way of revealing the structures that shape our lives and the quiet politics embedded in the materials we touch every day.