Robin Wise
Remembering Robin
Sometimes I sew to repair the past, make it bearable.
Often, I embroider to remain in the present.
Mostly I embellish for the sake of beauty.
This online exhibition marks the end of the first year of the Amid the Silent Flowers Collective. Set up by artist and educator Terence Wilde, he wanted to create a space for queer men and male adjacent to safely explore their experiences and collective histories through reflective conversation and making with threads. The monthly workshops were to provide an opportunity for social connections and the sharing and development of new skills, knowledge, and friendships. It was developed with initial funding from the Responsa Foundation, further funding and support from QUEERCIRLE, and project support throughout from the Jennifer Lauren Gallery. Scroll on for further information, some of the artwork created, and a new short simple film showing the importance of stitch in this group’s lives.
Introduction
A snippet from an essay written by Terence at the end of the first year, reflecting back. You can read the full piece by following the button link below.
“A recent homophobic assault on someone's boyfriend, in Soho in broad daylight. Complaints of intolerance aimed at two mothers with their baby, and a gay couple holding hands in a coffee shop, asked to leave because their behaviour is making a heterosexual family feel uncomfortable. I am sitting at a corner table in Café Nero, having witnessed some of this and I am trying to make myself invisible in case I'm next in the firing line.
I wonder why this hasn't stopped and gone away, why so many of us LGBTQIA+ people still live fearfully within its orbit. It’s 2023 and I continue struggling with the low self-esteem that this type of disgust and hatred has created in many queer people’s lives. I couldn't fight back when I was younger, I had no voice against something so profoundly damaging.
Around this time, I coincidentally received an email from my friend Jennifer from the Jennifer Lauren Gallery, with a “What do you think of this?” callout opportunity for funding. The Responsa Foundation support artists creating work around the many ways artists feel both divided and united in the world. The idea of starting an art and health collective for people identifying as queer men or male adjacent* seemed an ideal opportunity to meet up and explore our experiences and histories… to use our buried voices creatively.
The embroidery-based idea of ‘Amid the Silent Flowers’ was born. A small grant would offer the opportunity to explore queer men's lived experiences through reflective conversation and making. Looking into our queer identities and how we have experienced the world through conversation and stitch could be a way to move on with our lives through deeper connections to our authentic selves.
‘Amid The Silent Flowers’ would provide a series of monthly creative workshops, lightly facilitated by me, using a foundation of embroidery techniques and no previous stitch experience required. The heart and soul of the project would be in creating a safe space. Safety being paramount to the nurturing of queer men, when delving into our inner worlds and personal spaces, often used as retreats and survival mechanisms to cope in hostile environments. The underlying ethos of this type of work is radical in re-addressing how homophobia has affected our lives, particularly our mental health.
Taking a creative approach in looking at how prejudice has caused disharmony within the queer community is radical. It involves acknowledging past LGBTQIA+ history alongside the current perceived freedom of a more gender fluid world. Ownership of gender, sexuality, and the greater choices this now brings to queer men is possible because of the trail blazers, activists, the ghosts of hidden survivors and brave souls working from the edges of society to help give us strength to be ourselves. Allies, regardless of gender have also helped us with our emancipation, particularly women.”
*By the term male adjacent we mean non-binary people who sit close to male on the gender spectrum.
terence on why the group exists
QUOTES
“When I was at school, the way I got through everything, I just pretended I was straight, and in doing that I subconsciously created a mask that I shared with the world and I hid all those parts with the world but also myself. And what I inadvertently did there was I kind of like created this version of myself that the task of my adult life has been unpicking the difference between who is actually me, and who the mask is.” – Jack
“I grew up in a culture where embroidery and stitching was quite a big part of the aesthetic and it was something I was kind of deterred from as a child. That doesn’t mean to say that men were not stitching and embroidering in the culture that I grew up with. So, I think stitching and embroidery means, well I guess it’s like coming full circle, I guess doing something with my own heritage and culture and doing not what was expected of me too. So, there is an element of that too, maybe like a quiet rebellion.” – Shafiq
“When I started at secondary school I was petrified as I thought I was going to be bullied as I was disabled and I was different, so I found escape from the playground everyday by going to the sewing club. I was the only boy who went to the sewing club and it meant I didn’t have to play football with the rough boys. And I didn’t get rained on, so sewing has always been an escape for me… an escape from things that I felt uncomfortable around and I still feel that now really. So, it is nice to come together and sew with people who also wouldn’t want to go and play football with the rough boys. It feels very similar to that.” – Philip
THE USE OF SEQUINS
Terence is sending some text on sequin workshop and 3 images in folder to go with it
film
the film could go under its own banner: THE IMPORTANCE OF STITCH
END WITH ….
FINAL THOUGHTS
At the end of the essay Terence writes:
“I feel lighter and better about myself from taking the risk in setting up ‘Amid the Silent Flowers.’ A year ago, a group of random strangers identifying as queer men or male adjacent replied to a callout to meet and stitch together, to explore our experiences and histories through embroidery. The session times were doubled from 2 to 4 hours, and extra workshops were added to the initial eight, to give us more time together. Trips out to sew in café’s became extra-special moments, casting the safety net we made at QUEERCIRCLE further afield. One member even shared photos of feeling safe enough to stitch in a gay bar, allowing for a conversation to be struck up with the bartender who also did embroidery.
I can only speak for myself when I say I am very much amid the flowers, but I am not so silent anymore. It takes a lot more energy to be something you’re not, than something you are.
Thank you.”
“Robin and I go way way back, but more recently I was lucky enough to work with him for 10 years at The Craft Studio in Newton Dee. Watching him evolve and explore how he expresses himself through creativity was a truly inspiring experience. Robin was a man of few words, but his drawings and photographs give us a wonderful glimpse as to how he understood the world around him.”
