Katrina Majkut
The Stitch n’ Bitch Project
Paper, thread, needle, signed instructions, and Aida cloth
The Stitch n’ Bitch Project creates signed, limited edition DIY Counted Cross-stitch Kits as activist artworks aiming to disrupt traditional craft store embroidery kits. As an artistic medium, it has been present in all cultures across the world throughout human history too. Despite that, at any major craft store, the embroidery kit inventory exclusively promotes white, Western, conservative narratives/motifs that reinforce identity stereotypes. They exclude diverse voices/themes and other embroidery cultures. Though seemingly benign, the craft’s permanent home placement makes it a powerful influencer. With the last year’s efforts to rectify racial/social inequalities, crafts that only reinforce white narratives are counterproductive to social justice. The craftivist mission of the Stitch n’ Bitch Project is to disrupt these visual and symbolic constraints. The project aims to modernize, democratize, and decolonize mass-produced/consumer-based embroidery kits by making them into diverse, inclusive, and creative social change outlets.
Katrina Majkut, Embroidered Sampler from Abortion is Normal Kit, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist
PHOTO GALLERY
Purchase this artwork and others from the Call & Response exhibition online at MCD’s Artists Marketplace.
ARTIST BIO
Katrina Majkut (My’kut), a visual artist and writer, is dedicated to understanding how social traditions impact civil rights. She uniquely employs observational painting techniques in the embroidery medium of cross-stitch and a new feminist fourth wave strategy she calls Boomerang Intersectionalism to create her artwork. Majkut exhibits nationally in both commercial and college galleries, where she lectures on women’s issues, art activism, and textile arts. She was listed as one of four international artists starting a new chapter in feminist art by Mic Media and listed as a must-see artist by Hyperallergic magazine. In 2021, she will exhibit at the Bronx Museum Biennial, Every Women Biennial, Dorsky Museum, Untitled Space Gallery, and Alma College, and will be a 2022 Wassaic Projects Family Fellow. In 2020, she curated a show on America’s gun consumerism and violence at Dinner Gallery, exhibited at Smack Mellon (NY) and the Abortion is Normal exhibit at Eva Presenhuber and Arsenal Gallery (NY). In 2019, she was a Bronx Museum AIM Fellow, in the Feminist Incubator Residency at Project for Empty Space (NJ). She has done an Instagram art takeover for Planned Parenthood, exhibited at Dorsky Gallery, Spring Break, A.I.R. Gallery, the Mint Museum, and was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA. She has exhibited in over 30 college galleries. Majkut published her first non-fiction book in 2018, The Adventures and Discoveries of A Feminist Bride, which aims to make weddings more egalitarian. Her art catalog is in the library at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, D.C. Majkut earned her BA from Babson College and her MFA from SMFA at Tufts University. She lives and works in New York.
