XITONG

Living in a time of environmental collapse, and the reality of climate change poses a significant threat to human and non-human existence, I find myself experiencing the distress of Solastalgia. Under an information-saturated environment, it is challenging to process and navigate through this “psychological illness” during a time of crisis. In response to these unresolved feelings, my work becomes an exploration of my relationship with the world by focusing on a craft-oriented process of material investigation.

The way I see Craft is not merely a medium searching for potential in creative practices; it is also an intimate agency allowing exploration of my interconnectedness with the environment. I perceive craft practices as an awakening process that evokes my perception of animation toward material beings. It is a process where I establish a mutual partnership with materials and collaborate with their agency to tell stories through the process of making.

With a focus on the transformative potential of handmade paper, my interdisciplinary art practice seeks inquiry into the role that craft – more explicitly, the value of handmade – has played as an antidote for crafting belongings in a world of flux and isolation. By investigating the significance of repetition in papermaking, kami-ito-making and weaving in relation to creating a meditative space for reflection, my work navigates through various transformation stages of repurposed fibre materials that I gathered locally. I see my work and my practice as a thread, a thread that twists us in and weaves us into “a web of life.”