Gift
2017
Red threads, used clothes, wire
“We don’t meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason.”
Life is like a journey. I identify myself as a traveller and sojourner on the earth. In my life journey, crossing the paths with some people at a certain place and time looks like a mystery and not an accident to me. The people who influenced me positively gave me help and encouragement and even changed my life. I appreciate them and consider these meetings gifts, with a higher purpose and reason beyond human understanding.
With this installation, I expressed my relationships with these influential people. First, I was inspired by the material of yarn to express a "gift", as hand-knitted items often become a form of “gift” to show deep care to family and friends. I chose red color for the yarn as it immediately reminds me of an old East Asian myth of red strings of fate, where we express destined relationships as "connected with a red string" idiomatically. The color red is also a symbolic color representing love, as seen in the widespread use of red hearts and red roses. I collected some used clothes from my friends and family to represent something belonging to someone influential to me. I started braiding them with wire and red thread, visualizing the way people cross their paths for a reason. These braided strands started to form a shape like flower petals. It made me realize that these people are forming my life into a shape like a bunch of flowers, another form of “gift”. With a big ball element like a yarn ball on the floor that is connected to the flower component, I explored my pondering thoughts on an origin, God's plan, for this life journey full of meetings with people. Now, this ball contains about two miles of braided strands and I believe it will become longer as I continue to walk through this life journey.