Excited to share my first installation, āMendingā, from the MAC gallery event this weekend.
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Mending, a broken chair woven back together, reflects the heaviness I carry about our current socio-political moment, and the belief that we, too, have the capacity to heal from within.
The weaving practice was inspired by my time at the Gracia Artistsā Residency in Antigua, Guatemala, where I encountered the indigenous art of backstrap weaving. For Guatemalaās indigenous communities, woven designs carry a weaverās village, social status, and beliefs. It is an art form inseparable from identity, resilience, and community. Many of those same communities have been uprooted, their people joining the millions who migrate in search of safety and dignity. To mend with this tradition in mind is to ask: what does it mean to repair something broken, and what do we lose when we criminalize the people who carry these traditions across borders?
The installation is paired with a video inspired by a poem by Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul:
In order for me to write poetry that isnāt political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent.
Birds migrate by instinct, following warmth, safety, and survival. People do the same. And yet, in this political moment, the act of migration has become a site of fear and violence. Art cannot exist in a vacuum. The chair, like so much around us, has been broken by forces larger than itself ā and yet it stands, held together by careful, deliberate hands. This piece is a call to mend what we can, to bear witness to what we cannot, and to keep making in times of war.
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Extra shoutout to my partner and collaborator
@tomstew.art for creating the audio track for the video
