The Weaver

2025

conte, aluminum tape, thread, and glue on mulberry paper

[left]

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Altair

2025

conte, gouache, aluminum tape, graphite, thread, rice grains, and glue on mulberry paper

[right]

​

​[From the Some Things Held Together exhibition text, The Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, 2025]  The exhibition Some Things Held Together began as a half-remembered story about two celestial beings. A weaver (the star Vega) falls in love with a cowherd (the star Altair) who lives on the opposite side of the Milky Way River. The weaver is consumed by love and falls out of practice with her weaving, and as a punishment for failing to labour, the Milky Way River floods so high that she can no longer cross it to see her lover. She returns to her work and, in the half-memory of the story, she tries and fails to weave a fabric so tight it would carry her across the flooded water. 

 

This exhibition also draws from a different kind of flood, more immediate and material. Near the artist’s workplace in Vancouver, storms regularly cause water to accumulate and spill onto the streets and sidewalks. The city’s drains become overwhelmed during heavy rains, which flood well-used areas and call for residents to find new ways of navigating space.

In Some Things Held Together, mythic and infrastructural waters are processed through fabric, metal grilles, and dyes made of materials that were found or easily accessible. The exhibition draws upon an imperfect memory of the Japanese story of the weaver while also considering her in her form as Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and against whose light is calibrated the brightness of other stars.