This assemblage, Breaking the Mould, uses vintage and personal objects to question the expectations of girlhood. At its centre is an antique brick mould, overflowing with my communion cardigan, hand-knitted by my mother. An illustration of the day I was born, rose-petal rosary beads, and badges from pivotal moments of resistance surround it. A strip of hot pink satin ribbon, not a keepsake but a stand-in for the sweetness and tidiness girls were expected to embody, lies untied.
The mould is both literal and metaphorical. It is a container of memory, tradition, and cultural weight. From childhood I cut against it: short-haired, football-playing, objecting to “schoolboys” tickets, refusing to accept gendered limitations. In adulthood I carried that refusal into choices about religion, marriage, family, and politics. Each relic in this assemblage maps that journey of autonomy.
Rather than nostalgia, these vintage fragments serve as evidence of breaking away without shattering anything. They show how I shaped a life outside the neat pink ribbon that was meant to bind it.