StitchPunk

The NEQM is proud to host the world premiere of SAQA’s global exhibition, StitchPunk. The imaginative textile arts and three-dimensional works in this traveling exhibition explore a variety of science fiction themes and sub-genres of which “steampunk” is perhaps the most widely known across cultures.

The Oxford Dictionary defines steampunk as “a genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.” Though science-fiction author K.W. Jeter is credited with coining the term in 1987, Jules Verne author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and H.G. Wells author of The Time Machine (1895) are commonly cited as its earliest progenitors.

In recent decades, steampunk’s distinctive visual characteristics—gears and gadgets, goggles and top hats, time machines and giant airships—have spread to film, art, fashion, advertising, interior design, and even video games. Steampunk enthusiasts have grown into a global subculture that celebrates an aesthetic inspired by Victorian-era industrialism, but imagines an alternate reality or fantasy world where technology never progressed past steam power.

For some, steampunk is a source for creative inspiration. For others, the idea of a world set in a past that never happened and a future that will never be simply offers more optimism than the real one.

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