Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic!
Home Textiles
I collect used soft plastic from all over the world and weave it into new structures as a way to think about longevity, social connection, and potential futures we can make for ourselves. My work is comprised of abstracted chinese characters, landscapes, and free form mind maps. The Chinese characters are part of my exploration of my Asian heritage growing up as an American. The landscapes are linked to specific locations I have traveled to and collected materials from. With these I am imagining our future as humans on a plastic planet, rewriting our picturesque natural views with the manmade. As a biracial Chinese American I have been thinking about the Chinese word shou, meaning longevity. Shou is found throughout Chinese culture, first appearing in the Book of Documents from the Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC- 256 BC) as part of the Five Blessings: longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue and peaceful death. The three most important goals in traditional Chinese thought are happiness, prosperity and longevity. In contemporary American culture, we are much the same, constantly striving for longevity through health, wealth, and the progression of our family name. In this cross cultural pursuit of longevity, I find it ironic that when we are presented with examples of inanimate longevity we are disgusted by it. Culturally we are beginning to view plastic as evil instant garbage. When we are confronted with true longevity, the idea of forever can seem so bleak, if what we are headed towards is a future littered with unbreakable material, incapable of a peaceful death. So we must ask ourselves, is longevity what we really want, and if we don’t, what type of shift can we make to use and reuse our resources more intentionally? My answer is to work with craft techniques as a way of processing the materials I consume. A love of fashion and the materials which wrap our bodies lead me to study print and textile design. As a way of managing my personal consumer waste stream, I began to weave 3/5 these soft plastics, which act as the wrappings to the objects of our lives, together. I feel that weaving with plastic gives the material a purpose, a reason for being in the world beyond carrying home groceries, shifting its single use narrative towards a greater second life. Because my work is made of recycled plastic I see it as my way of addressing the global problem of plastic production, industry, and recycling. I am a one woman factory, collecting, processing, then weaving to make my art. It is a small act of recycling and transformation but I feel a deep moral obligation to work with readymade materials and avoid buying new materials whenever possible. Friends from my community know to save “special” plastics for me. Often this means a fun color, interesting pattern, graphic or mesh. I sort these findings by color, developing a wide ranging palette with its own subtle nuances and variations, building an index of material. I catalogue my plastics by scanning them into a digital archive. Preserving their original forms and graphics as a new layer of digital longevity, before beginning the breakdown and rebuilding process, hand cutting the plastic into rustling strands of yarn. I work with a number of different tools including tapestry looms at different scales, a rigid heddle loom and a Barbie Knit Magic toy from 1974. The methodical back and forth action of weaving soothes my mind, helping to bring me order when I feel overwhelmed by the insurmountable amount of plastic out in the world. Over time my collection has grown to include materials from Argentina, China, England, Mexico, Nigeria, the United States and more. By weaving with these yarns, I feel that I am bringing the many corners of the world together. Unified through a common man-made material.