The Mending Project is an interactive conceptual installation in which I use very simple elements—thread, color, sewing—as points of departure for gaining insights into the relationships among self, other, and immediate surroundings. It also constitutes an act of sharing between myself and a stranger.
Visitors initially see a long table, two chairs and a wall of colorful cone-shaped spools of thread. During gallery hours, I am seated at that table, to which visitors could bring various damaged textile articles, choose the color of thread they wish, and watch as I mend the article. The mended article, with thread ends still attached, is then placed on the table along with previously mended items. Owners return to the gallery to collect their mended articles on the last day of the exhibition.
The act of mending takes on emotional value as well, depending on how personal the damaged item is, e.g., a favorite shirt vs. an old but little-used tablecloth. This emotional mending is marked by the use of thread which is not the color of the fabric around it, and often colorfully at odds with that fabric, as though to commemorate the repair. Unlike a tailor, who will try to hide the fact that the fabric was once damaged, my mending is done with the idea of celebrating the repair, as if to say, “something good was done here, a gift was given, this fabric is even better than before.”
2017 The 57th Venice Biennale
2009 Lombard-Freid Projects, New York