Mending Body/Mending Mind at A.I.R. Gallery, an exhibition by National Artist Holly Wong, featured an immersive fiber installation which incorporated a poem and sound composition by Aya Karpinska and two-channel video by Al Wong. This was Wong’s first exhibition of her installation work in New York City.
Mending Body/Mending Mind mined the unspoken secrets that exist between mothers and daughters. Images and audio situated in an immersive landscape of fabric reveal hidden sexual trauma: a two-channel video of sewing and personal grooming activities was projected onto the fabric, serving as a proxy for a sublimated kind of violence, while a poem and sound composition echoed through the space, detailing an abstracted tale of rape. The poem incorporated the words of Wong’s deceased mother telling her own harrowing story of sexual violence, and was spoken in an intimate dialogue between Karpinska and Wong herself.
The layering of these visual and sonic elements onto suspended textiles created a sense of enclosure—the details of the mother’s story reveal themselves only in fragments, reflecting her response to the initial traumatic experience. But the textiles did more than just obfuscate. By completely enveloping her mother’s story in fabric, Wong metaphorically absorbs and releases her suffering, healing her of trauma. Using the language of traditional quilt making, the artist created an environment of transparent shapes from silk, cotton, and antique lace that have been sewn together, cut, and then reassembled again into an improvised patchwork that emphasized repair. Predominantly white or monochromatic fabric nods to the Buddhist mourning customs surrounding the transition to a new life and rebirth. The installation not only bore witness to the ways in which trauma disfigures the female body, it also imagined the process of mending as an expression of love between mother and daughter, creating a stronger whole.
View the Press Release here.