From Lausanne to Beijing: The 5th International Fiber Art Biennale

Another group exhibition that I'm in is coming up. From Lausanne to Beijing: The 5th International Fiber Art Biennial will open on November 25 at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Here's a snippet from the event proposal: "The main purpose of the upcoming event is to promote the development and exchange of International Fiber Art. The intention is to advance Chinese Fiber Art and art education through an international mutual aid and communication for Chinese and international artists, art colleges and universities in the field of fiber art at home and abroad. We hope to establish beneficial circumstances for internal and external academic exchange."

I have one work in the show. It's called After Me No Lover But Death Will Know You. It's difficult to get an overall shot of the work because it's about 200cm long, so if the whole length of the work is in the shot, then the body is so small that nothing can be seen of the detail (it's only 13cm wide). This was an early work where I didn't separate the hair into different colours before spinning and weaving. It was when my concerns were about the group, but the individual wasn't differentiated from the mass. The work therefore has patches of brown with a smattering of blonde, then a black section with hints of red hair, random and mixed up.

Here are two shots to show a bit more of the length of the work, although it is exhibited flat on the wall:


After Me No Lover But Death Will Know You is one of my early Holocaust-themed works. The title comes from a CD called Flamma Flamma: The Fire Requiem by Nicholas Lens. The songs are in Latin, and this comes from a song called Deliciae Meae:

POST ME
PROCUS NULLUS
NISI MORS
TE POSSIDET

When I first showed the work I wrote those words in graphite below the weaving, and had names of German concentration camps level with the work and leading towards it. The work was also part of my show at MARS Gallery in Melbourne, but in that space there was no room to include the concentration camp names. There will be no wall text in Beijing.