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On Tuesday Greenidge is a regular in the North Kensington Library, where they will often find it sewing in its great community desk. When we gathered in February, she carries a waterproof with a chaqui color, not by coincidence, of Grenfell’s fabric. Greenidge, a textile artist, has lived in this neighborhood of western London for more than 30 years. During the last eight, he has been working on his best masterpiece, a 220 -foot pendant art piece for 72 feet: the Grenfell Memorial Colcha.
“We wanted to commemorate the people we knew,” says Greenidge. His daughter, Charlie, was one of the survivors on the night of June 14, 2017 when Grenfell Tower, a block of 24 -story social houses in the center of the community, was lit. The fire took 72 lives, causing one of the largest human rights crises in recent British history. Subsequent research has discovered that 70 percent of the United Kingdom social housing towers have fire safety problems, such as flammable coatings, ineffective fire doors or broken emergency lighting.
After seeing the offerings of flowers, stuffed animals and hearts, the green heart in particular has become synonymous with the Grenfell community, left as tributes in neighboring streets after disaster, Greenidge was inspired to immortalize the tragedy in a quilt. “There were clothes that had just thrown in the area,” she says. “When we were qualifying for them, we were crying. They were rags. We are doing something beautiful.”
Reference drawing of the CONREDON COMMORATIVE OF AIDS Pioneer by American activist Cleve Jones as a monument for those who had died of the disease (to which Greenidge contributed while visiting the Lighthouse Clinic in London located next to Grenfell in the 1990s), Greenidge wanted to create a work of art in the dimensions of the tower block that could easily separate for individual commemorations. Since then, the pieces of the quilt have been exhibited in the Methodist Church of Notting Hill, Alexandra Palace and Birmingham’s Festival of comforters. Greenidge began to investigate the American gelatin roll technique, where pretended cloth strips packages are joined. She describes the process as “#Trapo to Ritsch-Kitsch-Bitsch”, with most of the original fabric of old sheets and shirts.
The first panel, a 12 feet piece per 12 feet with a patch dedicated to Raymond “Moses” Bernard, who died along with six other victims on his floor of the upper floor, was completed in 2018. The “Nomad Group” of Greenidge sewers has become a unit of 15 to 20 people who gather in the library every week. Anyone is welcome, from fashion students to members of the group of Whitstable blasphemics embroidery, whose tapestries promote the properties of the “stress relief”. Hearts and crochet flowers from manufacturing communities in Brazil and Mumbai have also been received.
More recently, Greenidge has been associated with the Quilters guild, establishing a network of sewing bees in libraries throughout the country to help finish the quilt in time for the tenth anniversary of Grenfell in 2027, and also to ensure that community crafts continue beyond its completion. Colorful and eclectic, the quilt has grown at 220 feet by 12 feet – 50 feet in width of Greenidge’s target. A tapestry records the names of the 72 victims; A panel- “Forget me of me”-remember the structure similar to the grid of the building in a Tie-Dye mirage. Greenidge points to another small patch stamped with the star of the north “to free the spirits” and a praise with boxing themes for Tony Disson, who was a coach in a small boxing club on the lower floors of Grenfell. They have lost account of the number of hearts. The objective is to hang the finish ended in a prominent place and photograph each heart for an upcoming book.
Greenidge’s first collaborator was Alexandra Brown, a Savile Row tailor who taught him to sew. The couple met in 2012 in 240 projectionA local health center for those affected by the lack of housing and exclusion where Brown was volunteer and is now a well -being officer. “The healing that has taken place through the creation of the quilt is something that cannot be expressed,” she says. “Tuesday has gathered the community at a time of great sadness, transmuting pain and creating the most beautiful tribute.” The additional support of the BBC Radio Eddie Nestor, whose call for volunteers and fabric donations in 2022 launched Sewing for Justice, a group of “crafts”, where the elaboration is found with activism: “artivists” and “crops” that contribute to the quilt.
“What I always liked about the quot was that, in a space that is very noisy, very chaotic and has become quite performative, it was this quiet thing in the background, providing people with a moment of peace,” says Kimia Zabihyan of Grenfell of relativesA group that represents the afflicted families. At the end of this month, the group will present an installation in Milan Triennial’s Cities Exhibition, where the quilt will be in front of its largest audience so far.
“It will be global,” says Greenidge, who points out an flammable coating, which is found as the “main cause for rapid fire spread” in Grenfell, as a world theme. Of the 4,613 buildings greater than 11 m in the United Kingdom that have been identified as a non -compliant coating, only 1,350 have completed the remediation. The crisis extends to India, China and Australia, where a 23 -story apartments block was erased by a coating fire three years before Grenfell.
The exhibition in Milan follows the recent announcement of the United Kingdom government that Grenfell’s structure will be demolished, a process that is expected to take two years. “I am not one of the disconsolate, I am not one of the survivors,” says Greenidge. “But it is not safe. It is falling. We would become a wonderful space where we can all join.” The quilt, he says, “is part of an inherited project. We would like to encourage him to continue as a way for people to understand social justice, and social justice begins at home.”
Cities is in Trienale Milano from May 13 to November 9, triennale.org/en/events/cities