Arts Thread

These prints are interpretations of the wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a feminist short story written in 1892. The story explores themes of mental illness, women’s health, and domestic confinement. It follows the mental deterioration of a woman who is confined to a room by her husband, who diagnoses her with “temporary nervous depression.” As she spends more time in the room, she becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper, eventually perceiving a trapped woman within its patterns. Ultimately, she tears down the wallpaper to free the woman. Each collection mirrors the narrator’s mental state, beginning with tight, familiar, feminine floral prints that gradually unravel. The patterns start to take on a life of their own, warping, stretching, and distorting until they are no longer recognisable as florals at all. ‘There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me or ever will.’ – Gilman These print collections subvert traditional feminine prints by reimagining and repurposing forgotten designs and colours. By challenging conventional notions of femininity through the recontextualisation of familiarity, here, a discourse is opened surrounding what is overtly seen and dismissed. The familiar floral pattern is subverted and transformed into something unsettling rather than traditionally feminine. The prints are warped, stretched until unrecognisable, to find hidden meanings. Many of these prints feature linear motifs, with forgotten colours and outdated 1970s and 1960s palettes of yellows, rusts, browns, khakis, and lilacs, mixed with contemporary pops of trendy colours to remind us that the 'pattern' is still recurring. Printed silk chiffon is layered over the prints, adding movement and life. The layering itself creates new motifs, enhancing the contrast between the familiar and the unsettling.

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