Ellen Lesperance – feminism, knitting and protest in Frieze

Ellen Lesperance once had a project to knit her body in white fluffy yarn. The question of bodies and messages and feminism has always been part of her work, so too knitting – something that could seem essentialist, reductive. Instead she reclaims knitting and its history to make talismans, create safety and explore protest, looking at how it was used at Greenham Common in the UK where women camped for years to protest nuclear arms. She pulls together all of these.

On Election Day I wore one of her sweaters emblazoned with a labrys. The sweater was modelled on one worn Greenham Common and her work looks at channeling, haunting, messages...  how they can convey, how ideas travel... Read more in Frieze