To Be and To Become: research (2021)
This body of research led me to discover how theoretical frameworks operate in practice: how theory can inform making and vice versa. Its introduction opened up the scope to what such a framework can offer in terms of clarity; finding the language to formulate one’s own purpose.
Out of the legacy of my great-grandfather, ‘the last basket maker from Risa’, I spun the wood fibres of his baskets into yarn through my own hands, whilst processing the fibres as pieces of storytelling. The material is woven into cloth to serve as a dialogical patchwork, blurring the lines between tradition and its evolution, much like the concept of queering, it aims to broaden historical storytelling by embracing many and diverse forms of language.
Speaking with the voices of yesteryear through its materials, partly sourced from the local and intimate surroundings of the village of Risa in western Sweden, the filament material aims to embrace the historically lived realities of its origin, manifested through contemporary sensitivities.
Photos by Molly Overstall Khan