Push and Pull

2023

donated yarn, crochet hooks, text translated into crochet stitches

Dimensions variable

Going into my second year in grad school, I felt myself returning to my fiber roots. For as long as I can remember, my mother and sister have been teaching me techniques like how to cross stitch, braid our long hair, and mend our clothes. I taught myself to crochet from a young age, and as I centered myself, I began to think again about language and textiles. About how we communicate and how we acquire knowledge not alone, but in groups. I am thinking more about community and communal knowledge and how we find ourselves in each other. So I created a new translation coding system and gathered text from my colleagues. This manifested as an interview process, asking each person how they identify themselves apart from and within community. I then asked them each to choose a yarn from those others have given me through the years. I thought of the installation not as the final work, but as a product of the conversations I had with everyone, like a residue or after-effect. I thought of it as all of us coming together and pulling apart, pushing and pulling against each other. And again I thought about loneliness in a group setting and how little we can each know on our own.