Elizabeth Claffey | Matrilinear

Elizabeth Claffey shines some light on the generational memory passed down by women. In her series, Matrilinear, she renders articles of clothing, heirlooms, and sewing tools into translucent forms, ghosted symbols of the family bond. The images are fresh in their simplicity. Claffey is both efficient and emotionally effective in her visual language and styling.

Claffey’s images strike a vein with me personally, as a new mother. I recently found the small dresses in the back of my own mother’s closet that she’d sewn for me as a baby. My encounter with those objects took me off guard. I now see the care stitched into the seams as something enduring, like a signifier of the parental attentions lavished on that baby, too distant to be accessible to the memory of the mind, but still somehow impressed upon me and perhaps woven into the way I now care for my own child.

Specific pieces of clothing can bring up the longing for closeness, and Claffey works with this so beautifully. She shows, in a rather haunting way, the lineage we have stored in our sleeves or pressed close to the chest.

-Lisa

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