Art and storytelling using fabric
Virginia Winder learns about a joyful creative workshop called Tactile Histories, being held on the last day of the Taranaki Arts Festival Trust’s Winter Fest.
The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 forced Rozana Lee to rethink her entire life purpose and priorities. She had been living in Singapore with husband Grant Lee and six-month-old son Ethan when her home in Aceh province, Indonesia, was wiped out by a massive wave of water caused by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake.
‘‘We lost a lot of people, my childhood friends, relatives and my mum,’’ she says.
More than 200,000 people died in Indonesia and many were unaccounted for, particularly in the northern Sumatra province.
‘‘That was massive. I just gave birth to my first son, my eldest, and I was still breastfeeding. My mum visited me when I gave birth in Singapore for a couple of weeks and then she was supposed to visit me in a month’s time after Christmas.’’
Her dad Karimun survived the tsunami, but her mother, Rosna was lost. ‘‘We never found my mum, so that was very hard for me. Becoming a new parent myself also gave new understanding and appreciation for my own parents.’’
Lee found the tragedy surreal and was unable to give up hope.
‘‘I was always thinking we might somehow find her. It was that wishful thinking that continued until the 10 years’ commemoration and it started to sink in that she was never coming back. I wasn’t crazy. They did find a little girl who was lost for 10 years. She was picked up by another family, so that was a good ending.’’
But not for Lee’s family.
As a new mum with a 15-year career in banking and married to a New Zealand engineer, she started thinking about her own future.
‘‘I decided to make changes: take care of my family first and then I was thinking ‘what do I really want to do for myself?’ I always loved art. I would like to think my parents were quite artistic as well.’’
Her father had a fabric shop in Aceh and the family lived on the second floor. ‘‘So, I grew up with fabrics, patterns and colour. We always had excess of fabric, like half a metre left, so we had plenty of it.’’
Lee was fourth generation Chinese living in Indonesia, a country she never felt accepted by.
‘‘As migrants’ descendant, I was never considered as originating from that land. I was perceived as a ‘foreigner’ disregarding how many
generations we have lived there. It was sad, so where do I belong?’’
When she was growing up, Chinese weren’t allowed to learn their own language or use their family name, which was Lee.
Instead, she was simply known as Rozana. When she went to apply for a passport that caused a problem, because a single name wasn’t acceptable, so she adopted her father’s first name as her surname until she married Grant Lee in 2002.
‘‘I reclaimed my original family name through my husband who is of British origin. People say you are marrying him for his family name. It just happened, I met him in Singapore and it was such a coincidence,’’ she laughs.
Lee moved to Singapore in 1998. She had been living alone in Jakarta during a time when Chinese people were being badly persecuted – their houses were burnt, people killed and women raped.
In Singapore she made a new life with her husband and their two boys, Ethan and Troy.
She also began exploring her artistic side.
When the family moved to New Zealand in 2010, she took many art classes and decided to pursue a degree. In 2013, she started an under-graduate degree in Visual Arts at AUT, which she completed in two years.
Then she had a year off studying and did an artist’s residency in Singapore. Next, she went to Elam School of Fine Arts to do a post-graduate diploma (PGDipFA) focusing on the use of ornamental patterns in material and visual culture.
Her research project examines how patterns not only bear historical and aesthetic knowledge of a specific culture, but also act as a connecting thread between generations, diverse culture and countries through early migration, introduction of religion, international trade, colonisation and cross-cultural exchanges.
‘‘I was a painter, so I started collaging cultural fabrics on to canvases and painted them.’’
She followed this with a Masters in Fine Arts at Elam, which she finished last November. This time she worked mainly with fabric.
Her thesis explores the notions of identity and belonging in personal, social, and political lives, and how these notions are never neutral, that they hold different meanings for different people and are subject to change over time.
Lee’s artwork has evolved to creating Indonesian cultural batik fabric using traditional methods dating back to the 12th Century.
She incorporates diverse cultural patterns she is affiliated with, to tell a story of her navigations across and between cultures.
‘‘Fabrics are essential because we are wrapped in fabric since birth until death. We often take it for granted and don’t pay much attention to it,’’ she says.
‘‘I’ve got fabrics that my mum passed on to me, like the baby sling she used to carry me and my brothers and I used to carry my sons. They are such a treasure.’’
That’s what she wants to share with people during the three-hour Tactile Histories workshop on August 25 at the TSB Showplace.
People are invited to bring along a piece or pieces of fabric with meaning to them and these will be the basis of a collage work. Calico will be supplied for the base, assorted fabrics for contrast, including felt, spray glues and iron-on adhesives.
‘‘At a workshop in Mt Roskill in May last year, someone came with fabrics – ‘this is from my grandfather, brought from England and it’s been in the closet for ages’.’’
The fabric and pattern looked to be of Indian origin. Historically, Britain had been trading in India since 1600 and a lot of British soldiers were in the Kashmir area.
‘‘She said it didn’t look like it was from Britain, but that stays in her family as an heirloom and something she appreciates – how could we not acknowledge that?’’
Fabrics not only have personal meaning to people, they connect the world. People used to be nomads until maps were drawn and nations created, so designs like paisley, are found all over the globe.
Lee says the paisley design originates in Iran (then Persia), but has strong links to India, where the motif was first adopted by the British.
The name of the teardrop pattern is named after the Scottish town of Paisley, a centre of textiles where the design was produced in the 18th century.
Looking at patterns can help trace generations. ‘‘You look at what my mother or my grandmother stored for me and you take it out and start paying attention,’’ Lee says.
‘‘Those fabrics we never throw away because we know they are important to us.’’
At a workshop, a woman came with trousers belonging to her late mother who had recently lost her battle with cancer.
‘‘There are so many memories that remain in fabrics, the histories and relationships, the connections and love. It’s a humbling experience to see what people bring with them.’’
One young woman brought an old pillowcase her father refused to throw away because it carried sentimental values although it had not been used for years. Another participant took along an old wool sweater knitted by his grandmother.
‘‘It’s an honour to run this workshop because you never know what will come up and what stories people bring with their fabrics.’’
Her workshops begin with the participants sharing stories that come with the fabric – if they want to. Lee can also help people understand the relationship and the history of the fabric.
‘‘I facilitate, initiate the discussion, and show them how to do it – the ideas come from them. At the end, it is their creation, not mine.’’
People will learn a simple way of collaging that doesn’t need stitching.
‘‘There’s spray glue that sticks so well and iron-on adhesive tape. It becomes easy for everyone to do anything.’’
The fabric could be from old clothes kept in a cupboard, longsaved material, a piece from a fabric shoe or bag, and could be palm-sized or a metre long.
But Lee says people will need to cut their materials to make the collages, which could be given as gifts to family members or friends, or placed on a wall at home.
‘‘It’s amazing when you are tagged with photos showing the participants’ creations hanging on their walls. It’s great.’’
The artworks have so much meaning for the participants.
‘‘They know it will stay in the family and it’s been glorified, and celebrated as a new art form and they can continue doing it if they want to. Nothing is going to stop them.’’
The materials for this simple collage art form can be bought from art and craft shops.
‘‘Or it could be a one-off and you make use of something from home and you are happy and that’s what I hope to contribute,’’ she says.
‘‘Fabric is amazing – sadly, a lot of fabric ends up in landfills and maybe this will mean people don’t throw their fabrics away. They can make use of them. I think art is in everyone.’’