Children Beyond Borders. VSA Arts.
Category: Textile
Celebration of Beauty
My box celebrates the beauty of women. The jewelry box, a classic symbol of femininity, is elegant and beautiful as is the women rising out of it. She is transparent as air and looking at her, you see your beautiful self reflected in the mirror. A universal woman, she is not confined to the box, but rising out of it. She and the mirror remind us that no matter who we are, our age, race, color, size, economic standing or physical ability, we are all beautiful.
Bali Spirit
The box is covered in a black and white check cloth which together with the red thread gives us the following: red, white and black, together with a Chinese coin as used in balinese traditions.
The significance is:
The cloth covering the box is a symbol of this world in which there are always two opposites, for example: day/night; good/evil; rich/poor; etc.
The round coin with a hole signifies that life is never ending and the world is always turning.
The three colours represent the three great Gods called “have the meaning: dengan adanya TRI MURTI. Each of these three Gods have their own characteristics, which are:
– Dewa Brahma is represented by fire which is a creative force. Everything in nature is represented by the red colour.
– Dewa Wisnu the God of water, protects the contents of our natural world and His colour is black
– Dewa Siwa, the Wind, is the Destroyer, whose colour is white.
Break Water
Borders are changing lines on our world’s map that demarcate culture, land, time, history, ethnicity. These are intellectual separations, but the older physical lines of division are also lines of connection- the oceans that separate us, join us. Water is the vehicle for life- our food, our bodies, our planet. Women share the experience of our body’s potential to transmit new life. Our female bodies are both the source of our common oppression and transcendence. Break Water recalls the moment that proceeds birth. The image is simultaneously bound and released, evoking change, possibility, destruction, hope. I have included materials from previous works; a Xerox transfer image of a rope sculpture I made across a rotten East River pier in New York City, and two eggs which I collected in Brazil during a women’s collaborative show. These are symbolic “births” of new ideas and images that women artists are collectively making to Break Water and change the marks that divide us.
Love
My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.
On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?
On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?
Beyond Bounds and Borders
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Barbro Sachs-Osher, CONSUL GENERAL OF SWEDEN IN SAN FRANCISCO, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD FOR THE BERNARD OSHER FOUNDATION and Ulla de Larios, ARTIST
This box honors Barbro Sachs-Osher whose generosity goes beyond bounds and borders.
State of Grace
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER and Terry Acebo Davis, ARTIST
These trophies are awards to the plights that we face as women.
Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.
In our endeavors, our lives can be in danger, our pasts can haunt us, our vulnerabilities can be exposed.
Unselfishly, women strive to be all things to everyone; we endure the odds guided by our passion to care for our world families.
Holy Arc with Torah Scroll
The Family Box
Croash Patrick
Time to talk to learn memories from the past
Pick up after the loss of some of my family
Hope in peace beneath the wings and carry me away from strife
Out Of My Head
One Thousand Years of Sewing into the Night
My grandmother’s sewing box, a gift from her mother, handed down to me by my mother, is my inspiration for Women beyond borders. I have made a tiny sarcophagus of pins, cotton and frayed red velvet – to symbolize thousands of droplets of blood from pin-pricked fingers – all embedded in the wax of candles burned into the night, lighting women’s often unappreciated work of skill, toil and pleasure.
Knitting Machine for a Woolen Cord
My work is full of allusions to the ‘female’ element, mythology and cordicraft. Wool thread is the main material in my ‘knitted sculptures.’ The box contains a small knitting machine and a small bobbin of wool thread. This is a traditional way of making a cord, and anyone can continue the process of knitting. It is like a trip, a memory, but the tip of the thread must remain in the box.
Untitled
Memory
Marriage
USA / UK Artist.
In Half
The bag is packed
A wonderful trip
A million miles
Back and forth
I am English
I am American?
I am in half
Never completely at home
A heart, a soul, a life
Chosen and divided
USA / UK Artist.
Untitled
El Mundo de Maria Sabina
El Voto
This is a memorial to all in my country, Guatemala, who have never received a proper burial, and were not only insanely murdered by the army of their own country, but then piled up in clandestine cemeteries, so that their loved ones could never come and be with them.
And the epitaph (THE WISH) reads as follows:
Oh! Please give us a tomb!
a tomb for our souls,
for our poor bodies,
so sore
and tough
from that volcanic lime!
We plead you,
we implore you, dear God, dear people,
dear brothers,
little brothers and little sisters,
give us a tomb,
a safe tomb,
with a shroud made of sweetness,
a place to console us,
a nice place,
to erase the infamy,
a beautiful tomb,
for us!
A Broadway Director Dreams
Gato Kaca’s House
The Flow of Time
Untitled #1
Top: the 3 jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings) and the Sangha (spiritual community)
Color: yellow for the Lama’s robes
Images: lotus flower, 3 jewels with Bon swastika (Bon was the religion of Tibet before Buddhism), fish, vase with flowers
Inside the Box: barley
A Piece of My Heart
mary daley’s gyn/cology and wickedary
germaine greer’s the obstacle race
zora neale hurston’s their eyes were watching god
ruth klüger’s weiter leben: eine jugend
toni morrison’s playing in the dark
grace paley’s 3 short stories
adrianne rich’s of woman born
alice walker’s in search of our mother’s gardens
Untitled
Blue skies, sun rises, sun sets.
Very quickly, you leave us
Like a bow leaving it’s arrow.
We stay. It’s good to stay.
Our future is good.
Top: flower
Images: Knot of eternity, eight-petaled flower, Bon swastika, 3 jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings) and the Sangha (spiritual community), sun, moon, flowers
Inside the Box: Kata (white scarf used as offering to Lamas or enlightened people)
Text: World Peace
Blue sky, sun rises, sun sets.
Very quickly, you leave us
Like a bow leaving it’s arrow.
We stay. It’s good to stay.
Our future is good.
Brick
Indulgence
This project is based primarily on my interaction with family members – my mother and sisters. I have chosen to engage in this community and my interaction with them started more than twenty years ago. All of them now are working females, already spending half their lives working, financing their flats, maintaining households, and taking care of children and husbands. Growing up in such an environment has prompted me to have many thoughts. As an artist and having the privilege to express, I included this engagement in my artwork to reflect and to question the roles of women in our modern society today.
Equity
Domestic Goddess
Parcel
My artistic endeavors dwell on questioning the ideal body portrayed by popular culture, by way of designing and making prosthetic garments that allow small people to be what they are not; awkwardly tall, beer-gutted, seat-spillers and generally voluminous. The combination of humor, formal relationships and social commentary are also mixed in most of my site-specific installations.
Close to the Edge
This collaborative project focuses on the network of relationships which support the mother as she experiences changes in Self identity within the frame of Motherhood. The changing perceptions of Self, whilst universal in Motherhood, differs significantly from person to person. This project involves each member of my personal support group of expatriate mothers in Singapore, expressing their experiences of motherhood in a “foreign” environment. Through the box, I sought to express my personal experience on a theoretical basis, placed in the context of my support network. Thereby the work seeks to reveal the differing experiences and changes in the perception of self, as well as the importance of a transient support network.
Untitled
This box of boundaries and borders of seams and skin-colored patterns uses the images produced to explore the possibilities of connection. By using these borders between colors of skin as a connection instead of a boundary of separation, it creates a quilt-like or map-like pattern. The connection of the visual image similar to a map and the intellectual understanding of different ethnicities throughout the world attempts to introduce the possibility of these coming together beautifully without attempting uniformity.
This cloth covering, this skin is also superficial. This cloth is synthetic and covers the box almost completely, except for one run in the stocking and one square wall inside the box. These show the natural wood underneath this cloth skin, the same wood each woman began her box with.
The images produced from this quilting of panty-hose is almost primitive and yet the material is a symbol of progressive, fashionable women. The appearance of smooth, uniformly colored legs has been considered beautiful in Western Europe and America for some time now. This aspect introduces the difference in perspectives of beauty.
Sewing with my hair weaved in the traditional concept of long hair as beautiful and feminine. This image of women’s long hair is in many regions and reminds me of the many places I find hair I have shed, in the bed, in the shower, on my clothes, on the floor. Historically in some areas women used to sew with horse hair. The concept of women’s hair connecting many regions twists the projection of beauty into a powerful relationship where the object that was used as a thing to look at, now fulfills the position of bridging the boundaries, of connecting the borders.
The process of sewing this box reminded me of the women throughout the world who sew for their families and communities. They create to keep people clothed and warm. The process is time consuming and requires patience and care. The needles remain hanging from the box by hair and thread because we are still in the process of sewing our borders and recognizing our differences and using these to create a new understanding, a new connection of women artists around the world.
Personal Affairs
The little book attached, describes the origin of the fabric (where it was woven and printed), its purpose (as far as it could be tracked down) and most important the donor. The donors are all women who I have got to know in Singapore (except my mother who has visited me in Singapore for 4 months). The box might be seen as synonym for the female body (or at least part of it), all those pieces of different fabric stand for the colorful, multi-layered women personalities. The chain at which the little book is attached has a meaning too: It stands for all women who have not freed themselves from a world which is still very much male-dominated.
Indigenous Materials – My Attributes…
Made By Woman
Although it is very difficult for me to think in the terms of ‘feminist’ art (or any kind of separation between the men- women activities), I can’t avoid the context of the Women Beyond Borders project. So I created the double box out of the single one. What inspired me was the fact found in the catalogue that the original wooden boxes had been constructed by a man (called Jack). Inside this wooden box I have put the soft textile box sewn by myself.
The work corresponds with the pattern of sharing the work: men build houses while women make home of them. Such a box is still staying empty, waiting for a real (probably common) issue. Besides this, I simply enjoy sewing.
REFERENCES:
Joseph Beuys: felt textile
United Colors of Benetton: bright colors, social dimension of dressing
‘Titanic,’ the movie: Jack & Rose relationship
My past works: ‘Portable Home’ project
Journey of Love
Journey of Love is about the relationship between my mother and me. It explores the all-consuming physical and psychoanalytical paradoxes seen in this relationship between mother and daughter, and the problem-solving exercises that may inform one’s point of view about relationships, change, and seeing oneself among others. This exploration leads to the use of the needle and thread, and the act of weaving which symbolizes the journey in mending of a relationship. My mother is my best friend and she is loving, intelligent, patient and reasonable. To weave is to tighten the ties between us. Each act of weaving symbolizes my efforts to mend my relationship with my mother. The use of gold thread constantly reminds me of my mother’s skin because she seems to glow with such warmth and health. The needle attached in-between the weaves with some of the thread wrapped around it symbolizes the act of weaving or repairing which does not end but continues on a more emotional level. The experience in working on the box was illuminating and therapeutic, offering me not only an opportunity to reflect on my life, but also it gave me the strength to be closer to my mother.
Hidden Beauty
Real beauty is hidden and then found like a box of treasures. These textiles represent women from different regions of my country. A heritage that should be preserved for our children.
The words on the box are prayers: to make good choices; be a better person – humble, patient and thankful.
The Myth of the Spider
For years now, being taught by the spider, I weave webs. Small ones and large ones using all kinds of materials. To me it is an infinite source of spiritual codes. I chose the ancient myth of Goddess Athena and the Spider. From the little box arises what has been marking us for centuries, the challenge of becoming Gods.
Two women comprise the myth…Goddess Athena, holder of wisdom, protectress and teacher of the weaving art and the Spider, mortal, outstanding weaver, daughter of Idmon the colorist, mother of Clostiras. Spider challenges Athena to a weaving contest. She creates a beautiful, flawless tapestry. This image insinuates the desire of mortals to reach the divine qualities of the gods to desire to live up to their level.
Athena infuriated by this, punishes the spider sentencing her to live from then on and forever hanging from a thread, transformed into an insect. Being an insect now, the spider weaves its beautiful webs till this day, still creating.
Art contains arrogance.
Art challenges the gods.
Art creates little gods.
Just A Tear
The box: the everyday object is used in different ways. It is taken out of its specific context in order to become an object that is artistic, cultured, of utilitarian adornment.
In this case the change is taken from a philosophical, conceptual foundation. To accept this transformation from a common, everyday object for purposes of exhibition, it is necessary to take on the challenge of new shapes and ideas, to comprehend their true structure in order to give it symbolism and a distinct visual representation: a confrontation between form and action, between reality and idea. This is to say, the object must be viewed from another angle in order to break the established canons. This shall be the philosophical stance for my work.
My subject is tears. I began with an incision between the warmth and gentleness of the wood sharply contrasted against the rigidity and coldness of the metal exterior, in order to place, in its delicate interior, a tear.
Tears are shed daily; they are commonplace and become relics when taken out of their context, just as the crusaders brought back relics from the Holy Land: pieces from the cross, from the crown of thorns, from the robe, from the nails. These amulets, upon being sacrificed, acquire properties of protection for those who hold them.
This syncretism happens in the Americas, lands which we carry deep within ourselves from the cultures of our origin and the influence of the Christian religion brought over by the Europeans.
Vulnerable
Jill In The Box
Of Sticks a Stack – a Stake (a Failure?)
Listen, don’t tell anyone: I failed at the object/box (by the way a daily experience, not at all new). But here’s the result, just look at it: everything twisted, turned upside down; the lid, instead of dropping it, has become the basis of a stake (surprise, surprise!). Too small for burning witches, too small for celebrating heroes, but small enough for the kindling of a stirring idea.
Until Death Do Us Part
In my home country, Japan, there is a legend for girls that says that their prospective husbands have their little toes tied up to them with an invisible red thread. I used to believe in this legend as well. In my opinion it is wonderful to be able to believe in such a thing.
Since we’re infants, we are educated to play a role either as a woman or as man. I still remember when I used to play house-dolls with my friends and how much we enjoyed playing the mother’s role, like all the mothers of every mother. It is a simple but very pleasing memory that all women have inside. However, nowadays I often feel a victim of the male order and often wonder what can I do about it.
I was thinking of this as I was making my box and I felt like I was playing with dolls again because I was doing typical housework tasks such as sewing, washing, and ironing.
I hope you will tender my piece during the traveling exhibition as if it were our collective memory, which men will never be able to understand. And please, wash it and iron it when needed.
P.S. Do you know what? In Japanese, when we say “to get married” we use the word “to be tied up.” In the end, every princess will be tied up to their blue prince.