Kintsugi Stitches

First Place Award, Marin MOCA Altered Book Exhibition, 2020

Remnant fabric, silk covered paper yarn, gold pigment ink, hand stitched bojagi (traditional Korean wrapping cloth)
8 x 5 x 1 inches

The killing of George Floyd broke me. Stitching African fabrics into beautiful art was medicine during the healing journey of my heart. The black sumi ink painted square, a symbol of Black Out Tuesday, is a reminder of the terrible incident. We must remember history. I used African textiles to honor the thousands of African American quilters and their beautiful textile art celebrating their cultural heritage. Inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, I stitched “cracks” into the fabric remnants, painted them with gold pigment and stitched them into the book pages. Writing down words and phrases along the painted cracks in the book helped me process my pain.

The concepts of kintsugi which recognizes the history of brokenness and restoration to a stronger and more beautiful vessel is a metaphor for my belief that in order for our society to fully achieve recovery and renewal, we need to acknowledge the fractures in our culture. Brokenness must be seen to be mended. I used a combination of African and Korean textile remnants to hand stitch a bojagi, a traditional Korean wrapping cloth, to wrap and close the book. Bojagi carries wishes for happiness to its recipient. I decorated the bojagi sash with bak jwi (bat in Korean) ornamental knots, symbols of good luck. The clouds in the Korean textiles, traditional auspicious symbols of longevity, express my hope for African Americans’ lives, long prosperous lives. The combination of textiles from different cultures expresses my beliefs that we are all interconnected, that each of us is of equal infinite value, and that I stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Stitch by stitch, only together, will we get through these chaotic devastating times because as Anne Lamott writes in her book “Alone, we are doomed.”