Original plan

The initial goal of this assignment was to play with a canvas by cutting and reassembling it. I planned to assemble it into a canvas, but it took a much different shape!

The painting process

I was going to incorporate jeans in this project, and I wanted orange canvas as a complementary colour. After painting orange, I had the idea to use skin tones to fit with the pants theme. I ended up mostly removing the jeans after all!

Process shots

I decided to make my project with many strips of paper attached together in a long line. I was going to sew them, but the sewing machine couldn’t get through the canvas and it was too tedious by hand. My stapler proved to be a trusty tool! Below is the finished chain of painted canvas. I chose to make each strip of canvas a different colour, length, width, and they had different levels of “bumpiness” and tears. I will explain more later, but each strip represents one person’s life. The lengths of the strips are their age, the colour represents race, and the other elements of the fabric are for viewers to interpret.

After stapling, I went through the entire chain and put one to three words on each strip. My project is about humanity’s fight for unity, justice and harmony amongst very polarized beliefs, life experiences and personalities. Because of this, I wanted the project to be very specific and personal. I chose to make each strip represent a person who I know by having a word that reminds me of a part of them that is either physical, personality, background, role/occupation-based, religious or perspective-based. I did this by literally going through all of the people I follow on my art Instagram account (and some others) and choosing words from them that stand out to me about them. This made the project very personal for me and helps me humanize people and the conflicts they face. I will not say who the people for these words are, but I will say some of the words that I chose: gardener, depressed, lovely smile, blond, Sikh, gay, Canuck fan, mom, German, mentor, helper, artist, compassionate, (someone’s) ex-boyfriend, anti-masker, family issues, anorexic, liberal Christian, British, agnostic, pastor’s kid, kayaker, glasses and many others. (I also included “professor” just for you). I wanted to include some of these positive and heavy and loaded words as a reality of society without critiquing or judging them in themselves, but acknowledging that they exist in humans, while knowing that these people have incredible value. I chose to staple all of these people together as a symbol of a desire for connection, harmony and reconciliation. All of the people are also attached to symbolizing our connection as being a part of the human race. Our differences cannot negate that reality. I was thinking about how people are seeking justice throughout the generations and we have achieved a lot of success, for example, in bringing about women’s rights, abolishing slavery, accepting minorities and issues like these.

Next, I decided to put all of the strips together in a globe that symbolizes the earth, and specifically all people from all nations on the earth. This jean ball is the base in the centre.

Here I began the long wrapping process! The layers of wrapping are like wrapping society into restoration through generations. Some of the layers are smoothly wrapped, and some are bumpy and less resolved. They are coming apart a bit in the under layers, but then are pushed back and attached with the thread more firmly in some later layers. These layers remind me of years and the scaffolding of progress. For example, slavery was banned years back, but racism still impacts our society. A loosely stitched section near the inside might symbolize the initial banning, but then the loose section is tightened by a thread a few “years” later.

One aspect I love about this project is that it is a thorough/consistent project all the way to the centre, even though viewers won’t see that. A major element of the art itself was my toil in creating the globe because it made me feel the effort that must be put in for reconciliation. As I performed each intricate creation step, I felt a small-scale version of the feeling of toil and pain as my hands get scratched from ripping and cutting canvas, and I stab myself with the pin. I felt a bit unsettled that the inside of the piece cannot be viewed unless it is dismounted, and this is why I posted so many process shots, but it is also a little bit exciting. Viewers don’t only get what is there, but they are left curious, knowing that there is even more that they don’t get to access. (I also get to be a little selfish because I get to experience the art to the full when viewers do not in this case)

I enjoy the globe shape as it allows continuous wrapping that is like bandaging the earth and wrapping up unsettled parts. And the “unsettled” ends of the chain are actually specific people and adds more urgency in bringing healing.

The final result!

I left the end of the rope here incomplete to display that society still does have a long way to go and many conflicts to resolve, and finishing the globe would have to be just an ideal for the future or an unrealistic view on the current situation.

Thanks for reading!