Vestige

Vestige

2012, Old Melbourne Gaol, Melbourne/ Naarm
Performative textile installation

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Vestige is a durational textile and performance installation exploring gendered identity, historical erasure, and cycles of shame and resilience. Developed in response to the personal experiences as a young woman, the work reflects on the treatment of women in society past and present through a quiet act of endurance.

 

Exhibited only once at the Old Melbourne Gaol, Vestige was situated within a former cell once used to incarcerate women and children alongside men in the mid-1800s. Over two weeks, Dans performed six two-hour sessions, totalling twelve hours performing within the cell. Draped behind a suspended, threadbare blanket, she ritualistically stitched and unpicked the quote, “Heaven give their weary footsteps, their aching hearts, to a better place of rest, for here this is none” (Robert Hughes), into the fabric.

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The blanket also embedded fragments from the Register of Female Prisoners Penal and Gaol’s Branch 1857–1887, a ledger of names that remains one of the few traces of the women and children who were imprisoned there. These names sewn into the textile stand in for lost stories, transforming the blanket into a memorial and protest.

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Each day, Dans repaired holes in the blanket only to unravel them again, echoing the relentless cycle of misfortune, shame, and survival that many of these women and children endured. This repetitive, meditative process became both a personal and collective ritual of grief, resistance, and remembrance.

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Obscured behind the blanket, Dans’s body appeared as a ghostlike silhouette, granting her a unique perspective on audience interaction. Reactions ranged from quiet contemplation to verbal harassment and threats - particularly from young men, highlighting ongoing issues around gendered visibility, implications of the patriarchy and public space. In stripping away her identity, Dans exposed not only the vulnerability of the performer but the social dynamics that continue to police and objectify female presence.