Vessels is a Pratt faculty-led research project that explores intergenerational collaboration through garment repair and reworking as acts of care, healing, and resistance, positioning clothing as a vessel for embodied memory and storytelling.
The research will explore reparative/reworking practices and collaborative craft by framing repair as a relational and restorative act. Through this research, we will work with participants and garments belonging to ancestors and loved ones as sites of embodied knowledge, memory, and healing. The work is an act of service, tending to garments left in limbo by supporting their continued care.
The project will unfold through a series of one-on-one, intergenerational collaborations centered on garments connected to ancestors or loved ones who have passed. With the participant's consent, each collaboration begins with a guided meditation in which the participant holds the garment and reflects on sensory, emotional, and memory-based responses. This shared practice establishes a care-centered framework for the project, followed by a conversational interview. After the interview, repair and/or reworking strategies are then developed in direct response to the participant’s reflections, so that the garment can be mended, transformed, or reconstructed if the participant chooses.
*This project is grounded in care ethics and collaborative craft methodologies. Participation is voluntary, and consent will be ongoing. Participants may pause or withdraw at any time, and will retain agency over how their garments, narratives, and documentation are used or shared. Guided meditation is facilitated as a grounding, reflective practice rather than an extractive one. Garments associated with loved ones are approached with the utmost respect for their personal, familial, and cultural meanings, and all decisions regarding repair or reworking are made collaboratively with the participant.