The woven artworks of Catalina Swinburn seek to revalidate the place of women throughout history. In this piece, Swinburn weaves a historic edition of ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ into a tapestry, presenting these foundational female figures as the fabric of a global heritage.

Swinburn skilfully interweaves references between the chapel’s Byzantine architecture and its contemporary medieval work written by Pizan in 1414, as she incorporates mosaic patterns from the chapel into the ruins of the book. Further parallels can be drawn between Pizan’s feminist writings and Swinburn’s artistic process, as the individual squares of paper Swinburn weaves together to create ‘City of Ladies’ resemble the bricks Pizan uses to construct her allegorical buildings.

Although ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ was written more than half a millennium ago, it is filled with potent observations for our times, articulating its arguments much in the same way as today’s debate on the equality of women. With this text as the work’s medium, ‘City of Ladies’ is an appreciation of the vital feminine contributions to human civilisation across political, spiritual and practical spheres.