Bayeux Redacted is a feminist reworking in embroidery of the 11^th-century Bayeux Tapestry, which presents an alternative to its memorialization of warfare.

The original Bayeux Tapestry tells the story, in 58 pictorial vignettes, of the events leading to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England. It is 230 feet long and 20 inches high.

My iteration, Bayeux Redacted, is half scale to the original. I wove the ground fabric in three 40-foot lengths using Normandy Linen. Thus, the flax plants from which my linen threads were made, were grown on the very terrain of the originators of the thousand-year-old battles. My embroidery depicts only the land – earth, rocks and water. It is spare. Absent are the soldiers, the horses, the dead and wounded, the weapons, and the built environment. My work is embroidered with threads salvaged from remnants of woolen suiting fabrics, originally used to create the body of work Security Blankets. Before stitching, each thread was infused with yarrow, symbolic of the medicinal properties of plants.

Background

From 1986 to 1994, I produced a body of work called Security Blankets. These large–scale quilted textiles, appliquéd with images of bombs, missiles and other symbols of armed conflict, encourage a conflation of military and domestic security. Bayeux Redacted sets aside the irony of the Security Blankets, calling attention to the land itself as contested territory. The project offers a different way of deconstructing warfare. Metaphorically, the time spent weaving and stitching creates "whole cloth" of the ravages of war. This project performs a gesture of peace, returning the land to itself.  It is an embodiment of the earth’s ability to recover from the trauma of war.

I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for their support in the making of this work, to Gisele Suzor Morin and Lise Tardif for their assistance with the embroidery, and to Jane Stafford for her encouragement and weaving expertise.