Woman's Festival Baby Carrier c. 20th century

This Woman's Festival Baby Carrier, by Gejia, Miao, has an amazing quality in the way the overall pattern is broken down into smaller squares. It's like one big painting made of tiny paintings. What strikes me is the material itself. It’s textiles, it’s cloth. It is about a whole world of labor and process. It's not just the design, but the physical making of it, the hours and hours spent creating the piece. It's also fascinating to think about the difference between something made as a "high art" object, and something made for everyday use, like this baby carrier. What is the relationship between these two kinds of objects? Zooming in, look at one of those little squares. It has its own internal logic, its own kind of weird geometry, its own colour relationships. I'm reminded of the work of contemporary quilter, Rosie Lee Tompkins. Both artists share this interest in pattern as a basis for artmaking, which is a way of building the whole from many parts. Ultimately, it is about embracing irregularity over perfect symmetry.