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Needlework has been practiced throughout history, across the nation of Sweden and the world, primarily by women within the home. In recent years a revival of the craft has been seen worldwide, the covid lockdown and an aging population being two factors contributing to this. Historically there’s been a duality to the practice of needlework. On one hand, it’s been a means of oppression, and on the other hand, it's been a weapon of resistance and a source of joy, creativity, and collectivity. It has, throughout history, proven to be a political, social and creative tool and, as argued in this thesis, a spatial tool. The practice of needlework allows for the artisan to travel between different spheres. This thesis sets out to explore the potential of moving between private and public, performing a public domesticity through, for example, knitting.  Needlework is, in its nature, slow. This slowness, the repetitive movements of the hands and the touching of tactile materials emphasizes the process of making and prompts reflections and emotions. This thesis argues that methods of needlework as, for example, layering, mending, joining, ripping, and patching, clearly connect to the architectural design process. These methods emphasize notions of care and maintenance. The thesis uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate needlework as both the topic of research and the means of spatial exploration and representation, aiming to underpin the relevance of engaging with needlework in the architectural design process, as a way of maintaining the craft and learning new things. Rooms devoted to the practice of needlework haven't appeared in a building plan for many years. The design proposal, presented in the report, aims to explore the possibility of these spaces reappearing within the public sphere. The proposal is placed within the context of Sweden with no specific site intended. Proposing a space of appearance (term coined by Hannah Arendt in her theory of Plurality) actualized through the collective making of the syjunta (sewing circle). Creating a public syrum (sewing room)  where the practice of needlework and its practitioners can appear, connected to ideas of feminist architectural practice to make the everyday visible. The thesis project engages with needlework by seeing it as a collective act of taking and making space.

In 1890, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a piece of fiction that reflected her personal experience for treatment of nervous exhaustion. The story she developed created controversy and comment after it was published and, years later, agitation among feminists who found allegories of truth in its narrative. This thesis explores the use of linguistic features employed by Gilman to establish cognitive connections between physical structures and social institutions, such as marriage and domesticity, that confine women within contractual obligations. Gilman’s use of extended metaphor challenges conventional conceptions of the home, inanimate objects, and institutional authority and her use of metonymy extrapolates examples from the particular to a wider review. The main findings of this inquiry reveal feminist opposition to women’s subjugated status in the marital relationship and to established hierarchies of male control. The literary analysis exposes the efficacy of narrative gap and textual silences in provoking the reader’s participation.

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This thesis is based on the belief that representations of women in contemporary Ugandan art serve cultural and political purposes. The premise is that the autonomous woman (seen as the new woman in this study), emerging in Uganda in the mid-1980s, agitated for the social, economic and political emancipation of women in Uganda. It has been demonstrated that the patriarchy attempted to subordinate, confine and regulate this new woman. The press, drama, music and film became powerful tools to force her into silence. This study posits that contemporary Ugandan art was part of this cultural discourse. Adopting a feminist art historical stance, it examines and assesses the gendered content of Uganda’s contemporary art masked as aesthetics. On the one hand, the study exposes the view that some men artists in Uganda use their works to construct men’s power and superiority as the necessary ingredients of gender difference. I demonstrate that some artists have engaged themes through which they have constructed women as being materialistic, gold-diggers, erotic and domesticated. I argue that this has been a strategy to tame Uganda’s new woman. On the other hand, the thesis attempts to show that some women artists have used visual discourse to challenge their marginalisation and to reclaim their ‘agency’ while revising some negative stereotypes about the new woman. This study makes an interdisciplinary contribution to Uganda’s art history, cultural studies and gender studies. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Art History)