Work by a Black queer person.

My personal copy of 'Zami: A New Spelling of My Name' by Audre Lorde.

Work by someone who isn't able-bodied.

Mari Katayama's works that I saw at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Work by a minority in the country in which you grew up in.

Collages by me, 2019.

My dad's graduating class of 1995.

My dad, second row from the top third from the left. People have always remarked of how much we look alike. He hasn't aged much, but the older I become, the more it strikes me to see him in his youth, in what little pictures we have. He was basically my age in this photograph. Far from home, much like I am now.
He isn't fond of being photographed, but will begrudgingly agree to it now, but he especially disliked it when he was young. He came from a working class family who could not afford a camera throughout the first two decades of his life, so he doesn't have a lot of physical documentation of his youth. I've always been fascinated by images of my young father, and regularly beg him to ask his old friends and classmates to send him more.

memory/memorabilia/family/personal.

Work from a community without a clear author.

Western classical music places large emphasis on authorship. Composers gain icon status from being anointed into the canon. On the contrary, almost no song within the Indonesian 'classical' music canon have any clear authors, all sprouting from almost mythical origins.

An object that tells a story about (your/my) cultural or family history.

The night before my flight back to the Netherlands in the summer of 2019, my parents and I hastily put together this necklace for me.

My mother loves statement necklaces, and makes some herself, so I was inspired to have one of my own. We bought the pendant at a place my mom frequents, and whilst looking around the shopkeeper tried to convince me to buy the figure of Arjuna (male) instead of Srikandi (female), the lovers in the epic of Mahabhrata. "Women should wear Arjuna, and men should wear Srikandi." she told us, and my mom wears Arjuna herself. I ignored everything she said and picked Srikandi.

The colorful rope is from my mom's stash of necklace-making materials, and my father helped superglue crafting yarn to bind and seal the necklace.

Arjuna (left), Srikandi (right).

Publications that have inspired me (in relation to the group project).

1. The Sweet Feminist by Becca Rea-Holloway.

Using a feminine-coded method (baking) subversively to communicate an assertive message.

2. Untitled (Free) by Rirkrit Tiravanija

Art as a communal process, the importance of coming together and creating conversation in the making process.

So much of embodied knowledge is us imbibing the knowledge of those we surround ourselves with, so the process of creating something where community plays a central role is vital to me. Hence the importance of gathering & sharing in our knitting project.

Our knitting project has aided in my personal journey in processing my personal relationship with 'gentle', 'domestic' feminine-coded activities such as knitting, which are typically only afforded to white women.

The notion of feminine delicacy as a whole has never felt accessible to me as a queer woman of color, so creating pretty and colorful knitted patches to express myself feels like a reclamation.

Some early inspirations.

Even though we wanted to knit, my strongest early inspirations came from embroidery. I was really inspired by how the craft can convey negative emotions so well.

Since my personal interest (also what I wrote my essay about) has to do with the intersection between feminine gender identity, queerness, and racialization, a lot of anger and frustration surfaced during my making process.

Even though I already knew how to knit before we began our project, I've always felt a strange resistance to it because I associate it so much with white womanhood.

I think this is something that I will continue to grapple with long after we end this project.

From left to right:
1. Aya Haidar
The Stitch is Lost Unless the Thread is Knotted, 2008.

2. Izziyana Suhaimi
Stitch Studies, 2013.

3. Linda Ellia
Exorcisme artistique de Mein Kampf, 2014.

Knitting as a way to take up space, visual inspiration.

'Yarn bombing'
noun.

the action or activity of covering objects or structures in public places with decorative knitted or crotcheted material, as a form of street art.

"Knitters have yarn-bombed the trees on 175th Street."

Definitions from Oxford Languages.

Learning from each other.

Me teaching my roommate how to knit in our living room & Anna teaching me how to knit at the park.

From my personal experience, collective knowledge is not appreciated as much as it should be in the West. There is power in togetherness, which I think is missing in a society centered on hyper-individualism.

Learning from and as a community is very important to me, so I made sure to implement it as much as possible in my process. As a result, knitting has become a medium that has brought me closer to those around me.

Examples of how I've conveyed negative emotions through knitting.