UNWEAVING in Winter
By Tia Keobounpheng
Images by Caroline Yang
My body knows winter like it knows how to breathe. My lungs crave the brisk air. My skin retains heat in the cold, and my senses heighten with the changing characteristics of snow. Growing-up on the Iron Range I played for hours in snow banks twice my height, but my propensity to thrive in winter goes deeper than Minnesota, along bloodlines that all go back to Finland.
When I was eighteen years old, I lived in northern Finland for a year as an exchange student. My body recalls the short days and the way that darkness embedded a different appreciation of winter. Two of the most poignant memories I have from that time are witnessing the northern lights in Lapland and learning to weave with two little-old Finnish ladies whom I didn’t know. Both of these experiences still inspire visceral memories of wonder and longing that capture the essence of my project UNWEAVING.
When I first conceived of the project in spring of 2019 I envisioned the conceptual notion of unweaving translating into a collection of ephemeral structures that people could occupy and that facilitated a very literal unweaving of a woven tapestry. I imagined the work as sculpture, architecture, and nature-performance enacted in front of a large gathering of people. Like waiting for a geyser to erupt or for the sun to set, the wind could take anywhere from minutes to hours or days to unweave. (Maybe someday I will be able to create this original time-sensitive expression.) While the physical expression of the project had to adjust to be less ephemeral because of the pandemic, the original spirit of the project remains intact.
“Warp establishes the foundation of weaving, rolling continuously like the bloodlines that connect me back to my ancestors and forward to my descendants yet to be born.”
I had come to understand unweaving as a conceptual practice of creating space within myself to question and examine the narratives that held me in tight behavioral patterns. Since experiencing burnout in 2014, the sensation of unraveling that initially overcame me, transformed over time into a practice of more intentional unweaving.
In knitting, a single strand of fiber loops onto itself again and again to create a fabric that expresses the power of the individual. Missing a loop or damaging the thread can result in the entire fabric unraveling. On the other hand, weaving comprises many-many strands, brought into relation with wide ranging complexity, relying on the collective.
Warp establishes the foundation of weaving, rolling continuously like the bloodlines that connect me back to my ancestors and forward to my descendants yet to be born. Weft moves over and under from side to side, weaving itself around the warp like behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes informed by the structure.
Loosening the weave to make space between my fibers created the opportunity to see the relationship between them and inspired an ancestral inquiry that brought them into a broader context. What felt like my body giving-up was really its wisdom stepping in. Burnout instigated years of ongoing unweaving from the system of white supremacy that encouraged me to push myself too far while behaving in individualistic ways that were accepted as “normal” but are steeped in whiteness. Feeling broken enabled further breaking of attachment to patterns that are harmful, even if unintended. Tending to the aching disconnection from grandmothers I never knew helped clear my path. My art practice remains a vital part of processing the difficult emotions that come with this kind of layered personal reckoning.
As a public art project implemented during a pandemic, UNWEAVING takes the physical form of wooden armatures holding woven rag-rug tapestries that create a contemplative space for people to occupy. The first installation in Duluth in 2020 was sited in Sister Cities Park and featured four structures arranged in a circular formation with the archways focused inward, like a family needing reconnection. The location on a circular pad of grass, near Lake Superior, felt expansive and connected to the sky, the city, and the water. It also felt as exposed and vulnerable as claiming the family connection to Sister City Petrozavodsk, Russia and a story that my grandmother suppressed her entire adult life.
As I prepared to install the second iteration of UNWEAVING in Minneapolis for The Great Northern festival, the expression of the work changed to reflect the place, the time, and the season. On so many levels, as a city and country, we have experienced significant trauma in 2020, and we continue to face epic reckoning at a societal scale. This project is my offering and attempt to be and inspire the change I want to see in the world.
The site is located near the Trailhead in Theodore Wirth Park. Two large sleeping trees define the place. Their trunks frame the small swath of flat earth at the crest of a hill and the expansive view of the park beyond. Their branches soar above creating a sense of cover and soft containment. I imagine them mirrored as roots below the surface of the earth, completing their full-circle embrace of this spot. Three structures are arranged in a circular formation with the archways focused outward toward the park, the Minneapolis skyline, and the community.
My hope is that you will enter one of the structures and notice a shift in your perspective as you stand or sit, look out at the view, and notice the textures of the weavings. I love to lay on my back on the wooden platform and look up at the weaving and the sky. My gravity shifts as my body settles into a resting position. I feel close to the earth and held by the tree branches floating above. Sun illuminates the bright yellow structure and my eyes study the details of the literal warp and weft, absorbing texture and feeling the grit of my hands’ work. Wind makes its presence known as the hanging fringes of weft sway back and forth creating a rustling scrish-scrish as their edges rub against each other. It is this sound that ignites my body with goosebumps even underneath layers of winter clothing.
The goosebumps remind me that learning to weave with female elders in the land of my ancestors was the closest thing to knowing my grandmothers, thus transforming the very act of weaving into a connection to them. The goosebumps remind me of the jet black sky split in two as one half danced green and white for the void, thus illustrating the marriage of darkness and light. The goosebumps tell me that others before me faced their own reckonings and maintained hope through connection to the earth and each other. In this moment I am grateful to the wind for the gift of dancing weft, to the trees for holding this bit of earth, and to my body for all that it remembers.
Some questions that inspired this project:
How has the suppression of ancestral stories impacted our understanding of ourselves, of the places we live, and the communities of which we are a part?
How has assimilation to a system built on white supremacy disconnected us from the longer & wider tapestry of heritage and our community?
How do we face the difficult things that our ancestors experienced and never spoke of?
How does that threaten our understanding of current reality?
How does facing these discomforts open up a new world of possibility?
Read more about the project at unweaving.org.
Tia Salmela Keobounpheng (Tia Keo) is a multidisciplinary artist & designer living and working in North Minneapolis. With a BA degree in architecture and background in handwork, Tia Keo is a 2020 & 2017 Artist Initiative Grantee from the Minnesota State Arts Board and a 2018 Next Step Fund Grantee from the McKnight Foundation through the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Her work has been included in shows at the MN State Fair Fine Arts Exhibitions, Finlandia University Gallery in Michigan, the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, and the New Studio Gallery in St. Paul. She is preparing work for a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Duluth Art Institute in summer 2021.
See UNWEAVING at Theodore Wirth Park near the Trailhead for the full run of The Great Northern Jan 28 – Feb 7.
