Cartography of Survival
An exhibition of textile works by Jacqui Fink
This exhibition emerged from a period of prolonged emotional strain and the complex adaptations that followed. Rather than documenting a single event, Cartography of Survival maps a series of emotional, psychological and creative responses to circumstances that continue to unfold.
Across five interconnected bodies of work, the exhibition explores love, burden, repair, protection, endurance and the often invisible labour required to navigate uncertainty. Together, the works form a landscape of survival systems — different ways of carrying, adapting and continuing when resolution remains elusive.
The works were created over several years during a period in which family life was profoundly altered by mental illness, addiction and trauma. As familiar structures were disrupted and certainty became increasingly difficult to find, making became both a means of understanding and a method of endurance. Through repetitive acts of knitting, knotting, binding, stitching and construction, experiences that often felt overwhelming or impossible to articulate were given material form.
The Series
Each series within the exhibition examines a different aspect of adaptation.
The Tethered Heart considers the sustaining power of love, friendship and connection during periods of profound distress.
Enmeshed explores the ways family systems respond to pressure, redistributing burden and closing ranks in an effort to protect one another.
The Architecture of Repair reflects upon the ongoing process of rebuilding the self through repetitive acts of making.
Soft Palisade examines the evolution of boundaries, tracing a movement from protection towards discernment.
The Work of Holding considers the emotional labour of carrying experiences that resist resolution.
Beyond Autobiography
Although deeply personal in origin, the exhibition is not intended as autobiography. The forms move beyond specific events to explore broader questions about endurance, care and adaptation. They ask how people continue to love when love alone cannot solve the problem; how families absorb strain; how identities are rebuilt after disruption; and how tenderness can survive in circumstances that demand resilience.
Many of the forms within the exhibition emerged before their meaning was fully understood. Looking back, they can be recognised as records of adaptation — material responses to pressures that were still being navigated. The resulting works reveal the ways creativity can function not simply as a means of expression, but as a method of processing, organising and carrying difficult experience.
An Ongoing Map
Importantly, these works do not represent a completed narrative. The circumstances that gave rise to them remain active, and the adaptations they explore continue to evolve. New works continue to emerge in response, extending the map and revealing previously unseen territories within it. For this reason, Cartography of Survival is best understood not as an account of what happened, but as an ongoing observation of how human beings respond to prolonged uncertainty, responsibility and care.
At its heart, the exhibition is concerned with the remarkable ingenuity of survival. It acknowledges the emotional systems we construct in order to endure, the structures we build to protect what remains vulnerable, and the quiet persistence required to continue carrying what cannot yet be put down.