From Greenham Common to Palestine, Jenny Matthews has long been on the frontline of international protests against warfare. As a founder member in the 1980s of all-woman photographic agency, Format Photographers, Matthews’ images have brought to life the women caught in the crossfire of conflicts and atrocities across more than 40 years. Two decades on from her book, Women And War, this solo show, Sewing Conflict, brings together several bodies of work that immortalise and honour her subjects using the most tender of means to keep them in the frame.

This is as clear in the series of 23 quilts lined with images from Matthews’ archive as it is with the 35 portraits that use embroidery to mask the faces of Afghan women in ‘Facial Derecognition’ (2021). It is there too in ‘Torn Apart’, an up-to-the-minute series drawn from the crisis in Sudan, and a new set of images from Gaza. In the former, Matthews taps into the radical comforts of quilting, with some of her photographs of women in Chechnya, Ukraine, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and other battlefields printed on materials sourced from each country. If taken down and thrown on to beds, those seeking shelter beneath these handcrafted creations would be able to share the warmth of those depicted as they nestled in close.

As it is, having them hung on the gallery walls sees them become monumental banners finding common ground on some almighty crusade that lays bare the wounds depicted while trying to heal them. Named simply after the (allegedly safe) country where the photographs were taken, 40 portraits that make up ‘Rwanda’ (1995) are as powerful as the strip of five images of women in ‘Bosnia’ (1992). That power comes from what amounts to an ever-expanding archive of living history.

Drawing from DIY political montage and women’s sewing circles, Matthews transforms her already substantial body of work into something even richer, with images gathered together in a show of collective strength. This is brought home in some of the images that accompany the quilts, with colours added to change an otherwise black and white world. The barbed wire through which a Greenham protester is dragged by soldiers now looks like the bloodied outline of a cartoon heart; the woman from Sierra Leone who holds onto her metal arm after having her real one chopped off by rebel soldiers is framed by a string of flowers; the pregnant Nicaraguan woman is similarly framed, and with an embroidered figure of her unborn baby made visible. 

In a world where needles are used by men to maim, mutilate and murder, Matthews’ tapestries reclaim their creative and restorative function as weapons of happiness. This isn’t just about making and mending; it’s a celebration of the life of every woman photographed. Those posing in the ‘Facial Derecognition’ series have been made anonymous due to their everyday identities being wiped, robbed or politicked out of existence. Garlanded here with floral bouquets or knitted masks, however, they have their dignity restored and memorialised by Matthews’ intervention. She isn’t so much patching up the wounded but, by subverting her own work with other forms, elevates them to a state of grace that makes them iconic. The descriptions on the labels beneath humanise them even more.

In ‘Torn Apart’, the heads of Sudanese women are split, their mirror images peppered with red thread patterned like bullet holes. In ‘Palestine’, a wounded woman swathed in bandages screams, red threads this time hanging from her eyes like a cocktail of blood and tears. The sense of disruption and scarred beauty in all of Matthews’ images go beyond photojournalism to bring home the horrors depicted in them using everyday means. As the double-edged sword of the exhibition’s title suggests, Matthews is knitting together a rich and necessary tapestry that links generations of women by way of an invisible thread. As the tapestry circumnavigates the globe in resistance, it finds strength in numbers in a fearless and unflinching provocation to create a real peace-keeping force.

Jenny Matthews: Sewing Conflict, Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, until Sunday 12 May; main picture: Iseult Timmermans.