The Binding Project 2025

The Binding Project Christine Dixie

The Binding Project The Binding Project is an ongoing multi-disciplinary project by Christine Dixie. The Binding engages with the psychological and social implications of the story of the Aqedah (the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham). Core to this engagement is an exploration of the complex traversing of space as an artist and a mother - distance is required as observer/artist and closeness needed as a mother in relation to my son.

“The Binding examines the wider psychological and cultural impact of this lost body of fatherhood. Using her own son as a model, Dixie makes reference to key texts of Western culture which illustrate how the invisibility of paternity is, in fact, key to the establishment of patriarchal masculinities – an absence which is resolved through the actual or symbolic sacrifice of the son. “(Deborah Seddon, Paternity and Intertextuality in Christine Dixie’s The Binding).

The first iteration, an installation, The Binding, was exhibited in 2010. This installation is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Working collaboratively with other artists and writers, additional elements to the project have been developed in conversation with the original installation. The project now includes video footage, an academic essay, short stories, limited edition Artist’s Books, relief sculptures, and the latest editions to the project, an ultra-violet digital print, and an original musical score.

Repair 800 x 1180mm

The Binding, large scale prints, 1 250 x 1 800, Edition 10, 2010

Offering

To Sleep

The Binding Video by Mark Wilby Recording by Siyabonga Mthembu (The Brother Moves On)

The Binding Limited Edition Artist’s Book This limited-edition artist’s book is visually and conceptually linked to the installation, The Binding.

Working collaboratively with bookbinder Hélene van Aswegen, the different surfaces of the book – leather, mohair, embossment, paper, string – were carefully considered and constitute a conceptual point of departure for the book. The prints were editioned by Bevan de Wet.

Collections: The New York Public Library, New York The Jack Ginsberg Collection, Wits Art Museum

The Binding/ Folio: Etching and embossing, 490 x 860mm, 2012

Among the Dreams

A Beloved Body Burned

For Nights and Days

A Deep Impression

The Matrices noun, plural ma·tri·ces something that constitutes the place or point from which something else originates.

1325–75, Latin mātrix female animal kept for breeding In the installation The Binding, one of the ways in which the presence of the mother is indirectly conjured is using materials associated with ‘woman’s work’ such as a crochet blanket and embroidery.

These were the materials that left their deep impression, their trace, in the white woven paper through the medium of collagraph.

In The Matrices I returned to the matrices used for the print component of the installation in order to create the relief sculptures which constitute this series. Materiality is foregrounded in the act of creating and re-creating dimensional objects constituted in part from the original matrices.

Captured II

To Dream II

Bind II

Offering

To Sleep II

The Binding I Iterations Artists book. Edition 15, 200 x 200mm

Collections:

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art The Jack Ginsberg Book Art collection The Binding/Iterations is an artist’s book that contextualizes The Binding Project. It includes an essay

by Dr. Deborah Seddon, an autobiographical essay by Graeme Reid and an interview with the artist and curator Karen Milbourne.

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