This vibrant showcase celebrates the end of the first inspiring year of the Amid the Silent Flowers Collective. Founded by artist and educator Terence Wilde, this collective was envisioned as a safe and creative space for queer men and male-adjacent individuals to explore their experiences and shared histories. Through reflective conversations and the art of threadwork, participants connected deeply while weaving their stories together.
A snippet from an essay written by Terence at the end of the first year, reflecting back. You can read the full piece by following the button link below.
“A recent homophobic assault on someone’s boyfriend, in Soho in broad daylight. Complaints of intolerance aimed at two mothers with their baby, and a gay couple holding hands in a coffee shop, asked to leave because their behaviour is making a heterosexual family feel uncomfortable. I am sitting at a corner table in Café Nero, having witnessed some of this and I am trying to make myself invisible in case I’m next in the firing line.
I wonder why this hasn’t stopped and gone away, why so many of us LGBTQIA+ people still live fearfully within its orbit. It’s 2023 and I continue struggling with the low self-esteem that this type of disgust and hatred has created in many queer people’s lives. I couldn’t fight back when I was younger, I had no voice against something so profoundly damaging.
Around this time, I coincidentally received an email from my friend Jennifer from the Jennifer Lauren Gallery, with a “What do you think of this?” callout opportunity for funding. The Responsa Foundation support artists creating work around the many ways artists feel both divided and united in the world. The idea of starting an art and health collective for people identifying as queer men or male adjacent* seemed an ideal opportunity to meet up and explore our experiences and histories… to use our buried voices creatively.”
“Stitch is important because it is deliberate repairing – it is a conscious repairing of other issues, and it’s a metaphor for mending and putting things back together. It doesn’t have to look like anything in particular, you can forge what you want, or forge something you don’t expect or are not expecting, and that is okay…instead of having to follow a particular metric or particular set of instructions.”
GLEN
“I am new to it, but it creates a space where you can think about things or meditate over certain ideas. It’s a different process of how you think when you do something with your hands whilst you are thinking, rather than just thinking and doing nothing. When you are doing things with your hands, I find there to be less negative thoughts that come into my head.”
“The symbols in my work are a pigpen cipher. I used this to write secret messages to my friend who was queer at school, many years ago.”
JACK
“When I was at school, the way I got through everything, I just pretended I was straight, and in doing that I subconsciously created a mask that I shared with the world and I hid all those parts with the world but also myself. And what I inadvertently did there was I kind of like created this version of myself that the task of my adult life has been unpicking the difference between who is actually me, and who the mask is.”
MATT
“Working with stitch is something that I’ve always done really, since a really young child. So, it connects me back to my mother who taught me, and the incredibly creative, practical, intelligent women in my family who used craft, made craft, worked with all sorts of stitch and yarn and many things, so it’s a nice connection to that. Working with stitch also allows me to work in a way that is less planned and more organic than a lot of work that I do. Something that I can feel my way, so I don’t worry so much about consistency and it’s more visceral, more about how I am feeling in that moment, with an overview of where I want to go, but something where I seem to allow myself to be more experimental.”
PHILIP
“When I started at secondary school I was petrified as I thought I was going to be bullied as I was disabled and I was different, so I found escape from the playground everyday by going to the sewing club. I was the only boy who went to the sewing club and it meant I didn’t have to play football with the rough boys. And I didn’t get rained on, so sewing has always been an escape for me… an escape from things that I felt uncomfortable around and I still feel that now really. So, it is nice to come together and sew with people who also wouldn’t want to go and play football with the rough boys. It feels very similar to that.”
By workshop participant Shafiq
SHAFIQ
“I grew up in a culture where embroidery and stitching was quite a big part of the aesthetic and it was something I was kind of deterred from as a child. That doesn’t mean to say that men were not stitching and embroidering in the culture that I grew up with. So, I think stitching and embroidery means, well I guess it’s like coming full circle, I guess doing something with my own heritage and culture and doing not what was expected of me too. So, there is an element of that too, maybe like a quiet rebellion.”
By workshop participant Terence
TERENCE
“Stitch is important because it is deliberate repairing – it is a conscious repairing of other issues, and it’s a metaphor for mending and putting things back together. It doesn’t have to look like anything in particular, you can forge what you want, or forge something you don’t expect or are not expecting, and that is okay… instead of having to follow a particular metric or particular set of instructions.”
At the end of Terence’s essay he writes:
“I feel lighter and better about myself from taking the risk in setting up ‘Amid the Silent Flowers.’ A year ago, a group of random strangers identifying as queer men or male adjacent replied to a callout to meet and stitch together, to explore our experiences and histories through embroidery. The session times were doubled from 2 to 4 hours, and extra workshops were added to the initial eight, to give us more time together. Trips out to sew in café’s became extra-special moments, casting the safety net we made at QUEERCIRCLE further afield. One member even shared photos of feeling safe enough to stitch in a gay bar, allowing for a conversation to be struck up with the bartender who also did embroidery.
I can only speak for myself when I say I am very much amid the flowers, but I am not so silent anymore. It takes a lot more energy to be something you’re not, than something you are.
Thank you.”
Click play below to watch a new film about the importance of stitch for the Amid the Silent Flowers collective, sharing how stitching has altered their lives and given them a focus. This film can be watched full screen by clicking on the arrows