Yee I-Lann, showing with Silverlens, is another artist working collaboratively with communities of weavers. Yee, who will join artists Qualeasha Wood and Yuki Kihara to discuss weaving as an art form as part of Art Basel Hong Kong’s Conversations program, works with weavers from the nomadic Sama-Bajau communities of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, as well as the inland-based Dusun and Murut weavers of Keninga, to create tikar (woven mats). The tikar
feature a variety of motifs that explore stories, visual languages, philosophies, economies, geographies, and art histories related to the South Asian context. The striking colorful mats also serve as a form of social architecture; they are flat and modular and bring people together to collectively weave them, demonstrating the power of community, storytelling, and ritual.
Textiles and woven art have increasingly been utilized as a subversive medium by artists to demonstrate ancestral knowledge, Indigenous skills, and collaborative, matrilineal, activist, and communal ways of making in the contemporary art world. The Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, for example, who were shown at the Royal Academy in London in 2023, are celebrated for their experimental quilts that have been passed down through generations – from grandmothers to mothers to daughters. That sense of transmission comes through in the works of artists from across the world who are amplifying textile and woven art as a potent form of expression rooted in communal life.
