Disconnection-Reconnection 1960, 2020, 2024 unstitched-restitched trousers, tailor scissors, thimble

This work conceptualises my mother’s struggle assimilating to Far North Queensland. As an overlooked part of national and local history, it highlights the experiences post-WW2 migrant women faced when settling in Australia. Due to the economic boom of the 1950s, the government encouraged female migration to address gender imbalance; providing wives for the Italian men who were seen as a threat to social order. My mother came from Sicily to Innisfail as a single woman ignorant about her future struggles with communicating, racism, discrimination, stereotypes and judgement. She gained employment as a tailor sewing mens trousers, however once married, male breadwinning attitudes forced her to give up work for domestic and childbearing responsibilities. Living a submissive and isolated rural life, she silently suffered nostalgia for her country and family of origin and displacement to her new home. Disconnection is an installation of my father’s trousers that have been unstitched by my mother. Originally sewn by her in 1960, the separation of forms symbolise the severance of her old self, the detachment she experienced in her new country, and functions as a defiant act to her experience as a suppressed housebound woman. The exposed hand stitching, scissors and thimble are obvious symbols of domesticity, yet are reminders of her tailoring skills and time as an independent working woman. Uncovering the marginally acknowledged accounts of female migration in Australia’s social history, this work highlights the determination and resilience of the women who were forced to accept their new lives while maintaining past dialects, customs and traditions.