Through physical motions and conceptual notions of weaving, I explore unweaving…

THE WEAVE - The fabric of our identities comprises numerous strands of fibers, complete in their own right, that work in concert to hold each other together. The warp, foundational. The weft, moving through that foundation.

Just as weaving cloth requires coordinated effort and repetitive action over time, unweaving must happen slowly and deliberately. Remove a row of weft and the fabric remains intact. Cut a foundational warp or remove several at a time and the whole endures, even if altered.

Unlike unraveling knitting, where one missed loop or one snip of the yarn unravels the whole completely, the weave has more potential resilience.

So, what does it mean to unweave? How long might it take to simply recognize and identify the fibers of our foundation? How do we embrace an ongoing practice of UNWEAVING without experiencing complete catastrophe? How do we dismantle enough to create breathing space to envision a new expression of ourselves … and society?

UNWEAVING explores the ways tradition, culture, communities, and individuals are unwoven when we are disconnected from our foundation of ancestral history (ie.when we don’t know our stories or when truths are suppressed or not acknowledged.) A different unweaving can loosen us from perpetuating unconscious pattern behaviors, make sense of our position in the larger social fabric, and enable reweaving a more honest and equitable future.

The four structures stand in a partial circle on a pad of grass at the heart of Sister Cities Park, each honoring a family member who lived through the Karelian Red Exodus of the 1930s – a little-known period that saw nearly 6,000 Finnish Americans leave communities in the Lake Superior region to go to Karelia, Russia to help build a utopian Finnish-speaking society that never came to fruition. Inspired by the science of epigenetics and cultural knowledge of ancestral memory, I bring to light a suppressed story within my own bloodline.

The yellow structures exist as armatures for the woven rag-rug tapestries that are visibly frayed and disconnected from the full family fabric. The hanging strips of weft come to define the space within the structure as both a sheltered and exposed place for contemplation on one’s own history and lineage within the context of epigenetics, which suggests that lived experiences can alter the expression of genes in future generations.

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? What does it take to face the hard 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?

Ultimately UNWEAVING is about creating space to question our histories and our very selves. What am I willing to hold and process in order to heal the burdens of our past? What are you willing to give-up in order to create a more just and equitable future? What are we willing to experience in order to learn how to see differently?

We can practice this difficult work from a foundation of hope for a better future.

This project needed to adapt to the Covid19 Pandemic in physical form, but also in the method of engagement and communication with the public. I built a website that shares written work, quotes, an artist reflection, and a list of resources for each of the three main sections of the project and the website itself:

KARELIAN RED EXODUS / EPIGENETICS / WHITENESS

I also share an essay commissioned from a Duluth-historian, a short art film that I commissioned from artist Allen Killian-Moore with a portion of the grant funds, photographs commissioned from Wolfskull Creative, a process blog, and the collection of press the project has received. You can engage all of this content at:

unweaving.org