Partial installation view
Partial installation view
detail: hand-sewn set of shopping bags, made from hand-woven textile
detail: hand-sewn set of shopping bags, made from hand-woven textile
detail: set of plastic mass-produced shopping bags
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Pattern Migration
2011
Two nineteenth-Century woven textiles, three hand-woven contemporary textiles, mass produced plastic shopping bags, hand-sewn wool bags, and five kilometers of printed plastic fabric on rolls.
Commissioned by the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, this installation responds to their extensive collection of 19th Century American coverlet (blanket) weavings, crossing production processes in order to address the friction between globalized factory production and artisinal craft.
Working with three contemporary weavers in the U.S. and Europe, I had them each produce a new textile in the distinctive plaid pattern adorning cheap Chinese-made travel bags. Commonly used around the world, these bags are hallmarks of a globalized spread of objects, moving around the world along with migrant communities.
Working with a Chinese factory, I also produced five kilometers worth of plastic woven fabric, this time embedded with an American starburst pattern developed by a 19th Century weaver. This quantity represented the minimum order that could be placed, and showed the massive scale of factory production today. Visitors to the exhibition were able to take yardage from this hybrid fabric and were encouraged to make new "products" with it.
A set of hand-sewn replica Chinese bags were made from one of the new woven coverlets, closing the loop between handmade and mass-produced object -- a strange hybrid of disparate production processes.
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