KRISTI CHEN

Learning about my own family history, it is evident many traditional skills have not been passed down from one generation to another. Bamboo Basketry is a great example of a technique that is slowly dwindling away in my dad's hometown. In this residency, I was interested in exploring techniques of basket weaving using found objects which metaphorically speak to the growth of globalization/industrialization and the lack of preservation within our own narratives/traditions. The complexity of identity politics is evolving in our post-colonial society and many individuals, including myself, have lost skills our ancestors had. Therefore, to mend oneself by learning a craft that was once lost is to recreate a vessel that communicates the past and the present.

In Ursula Le Guin’s essay the “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, Le Guin suggests that a carrier bag is more useful than a weapon. The carrier bag contains and represents many possibilities, while the arrow serves only a single purpose. Le Guin further explains that the carrier bag “holds things in a particular powerful relation to one another and to us.” This theory resonates with how narratives can hold such powerful information through storytelling within our history of time. I can see how this relates to baskets as it is a carrier of a story that can be passed down as an heirloom.

Using empty lint rollers, broken carts and other found objects I plan to use basketry to mend but also grow those objects into another form of use. The growth of the baskets metaphorically speaks to the recultivation of traditions overtaking and eating away at these industrialized objects, similar to funguses and tumours.