On March 12th, 2025
Performance by Janis Dellarte and Isadora Alves
Entering a haberdashery can often resemble the inside of a cave: the immediate awareness of what lingers hidden, the vertiginous threat of a needle, colorful wools surrounding one up to the ceiling, the humidity within the ancient plastic of a needle book. Little has been discussed on the horror and enchantment the imagery on cross-stitch publications provoke. The very body postures involved in the act of sewing can be easily placed on the monstrous category, evoking that primal fear of the interior of a mountain. Faced with the recognition of the cyclicality of the spirit and the apprehension of the performative phenomenon of existence, the haberdashery, a place from which one believes has left and to which one is repeatedly summoned to rediscover that which is of the most intimate; as if a needle was embroidering (ALVES, 2024).
Analyses on Dona Rosa’s DNA suggest that she has existed for at least 200 million years, fossil evidence has shown that she has flourished on this planet for over 40 million springs and it is estimated that she was first cultivated in China between 2737 and 2697 BC (BARASH, 1991).
The practice of Dona Rosa consists of a cavernous - alchemical - process called sub rosa: a decantation of the spirit where silence is necessarily kept in order to better digest one’s heart’s bleedings. Sub Rosa is the final stage of one’s recollection before discovering that the world can look back at us (CHER, 1998).
Dona Rosa is sub rose is Dona Rosa is sub rose for over a century (STEIN, 1913). Dona Rosa rambles on the end of a cycle over and over again, and this might be the touchstone which reveals in us the fact which an “end” is not yet here. This fact is most certainly true as many studies have speculated on the possibility in which many of us undergo a dialectic yet constant sub rosa process.
What is in a name? (SHAKESPEARE, 1597).
Oh darling, my daughter, roses are not made like they used to be! (MARIA SILVA, 2025).
text by Isadora Alves
