2013 – ongoing
Anonymous Author is a project about Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, a Scottish writer from Edinburgh who lived in XIX century. My interest in her aroses during a residency which started in october 2013 at Stills Gallery (Edinburgh). Susan Ferrier was the author of three novels, but she had to write anonymously for almost all of her life because of her gender, and today she is almost completely forgotten. The work is inspired by her biography: places linked to her life and her personal letters became the starting point of my research, the node connecting past and present creating a dialogue between her and me, in order to make memory something alive. The work shows the important role of the historic memory in the understanding of the implications of gender preconceptions on women’s status and choices.
I’m still working on some aspects of this work. Here you can find only the parts already exhibited: a self portrait, an emboridered text, a letter addressed to a future biographer by Susan.
In a letter by Mattew Gregory Lewis (a scottish writer from XIX century), He wrote: “I have a pity, an aversion of all female scribblers. The needle, not the pen, is the instrument women should handle, and the only one they ever use dexterously” . I decided to embroider these words.
