Along Lines and Traces
My mother has been a muse and constant source of inspiration to me in my visual work. For much of my life her work has involved research into ancient civilizations in Africa, tracking their movements and lineages through meanings found in their symbols and emblems.
So when I found myself, during a residency in Beijing a few years ago, making a series of small textile based boxes, it was natural for me to send her some pictures of my progress. This in turn led to an exchange of emails in which we discussed the ideas and symbolic meaning of boxes.
The ‘backdrop’ in this piece includes the text from our dialogue, repeated a symbolic 3 times . Each repetition is traced in red thread to delineate the one from the other.
Hanging slightly in front, at both sides and piled below, are a number of 3D textile boxes, referring back to those original ones I made in Beijing which sparked off the dialogue.
Some boxes have fragments of organza cloth tumbling out of them, referencing dreams and cobwebs in the actual dialogue.
