Denise Gawley

Standing in the After

Not all knots are meant to be unfolded. Each holds something—silence, wonder, the past, and the future. The weaving of knots falls into an un-namable place filled with vibrational excess. It moves. I contemplate the tension that emerges as I restrain myself from unraveling what many would consider a mistake—even regret. What seems like endlessness is also finite. I move with a blindfold hoping to steal a peek of what lies within. Is it mine to shape or is it waiting for me to enter and become the knot itself?

My apophatic project centers on the question of what it means to stand with the after of my doctoral dissertation and subsequent time of professional and personal transition. Rather than asking what comes next, I have created fiber art using natural elements: an oak branch, cotton yarn and hand-carded and spun-fleece acquired on a personal trip to Ireland in 2024. I allowed myself to face uncertainty by resisting the temptations to untangle every knot that emerged.

I engaged in not-knowing—knot-knowing— as a disciplined practice, allowing meaning to emerge through absence and fragmentation. Rather than resist uncertainty through answers or immediate decision-making, I allowed myself to inhabit a place of vulnerability and becoming.

I drew on Curt Cloninger’s understanding of apophatic visual practices in his book Some Ways of Making Nothing: Apophatic Apparatuses in Contemporary Art (2021), where artworks (apparatuses) function as a tool that disrupt the production of meaning, creating conditions in which “nothing” can be encountered.

See also: Standing in the After, Research Catalogue (2026)