Night is a Fabric Made of Light aka Kain Lupa/Luka/Duka is a textile installation that serves as an entombment against forgetting. Here, the gesture of loss is that of tradition, historicities and the receding reign of Motherness, Nature and Divinity, whereas the acts of resistances become the ritual of remembering.
Drawn to the myth of the Javanese Goddess, Nini Thowok where she spins thread as moonshine, I attempt to entomb words and archival photographs as mantras and marks of memories. As a symbol of the waxing and waning of yester-ideas and rites, I employ wax as a medium to fossilize the layers, to pause and preserve the liminal spaces of loss.
To further delve into the notions of the abandoned Maternal Divine, a section of the textile will be unweaved, gaping a wound to the womb of the kain, in manifesting topographies of trauma and solitudes of unrooting, re-routings.
Over the wounded womb, a moving image work will permeate. It will be a gestural performance in response to these embodiments, framed by the fraying threads of the Kain Luka... light as cathartic rebirth to these constellation of wounds.
Glossary
Kain- fabric
Luka- wound
Lupa- to forget
Duka- in sorrow
Medium: Mixed Media installation comprising of textile, image/text-based transfers, wax medium and video art.