Murmurating Threads

Threads carry significant cultural, social, and political value among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI). Mallible, mutable, and adaptive, they can be woven, spun, felted, hardened, and then used for knitting and crocheting, embroidery, weaving, felting, tufting, even sculpting and programming.

In Murmurating Threads, artists manipulate and negotiate with their materials through a range of ancestral and new techniques. Fabric, in this case, becomes the vehicle for investigating the collective relationship among atomic humans, the symbiotic relationship between mankind and the environment, and the universal connectivity among different parts of the natural world. Drawing inspiration from unique East, Southeast, Middle Asian, and Native Hawaiian cultures and ancestry, these artists conduct careful philosophical explorations through fiber art. Through the combination of traditional, foraged, recycled, synthetic/bio-synthetic, and artificial materials, threads bear imminent possibilities and diversity that resemble those seen in human civilizations and natural ecosystems.