Becoming the Weaver: Embodied Craft and Installation as Forecast and Genealogical Gesture

Abstract

This practice-led project explores the intrinsic nature of the experiencing body through processual acts of craft and installation. This project proposes that intuition behaves with embodied memory and encounters of felt space to project and support the body through cyclical time with ongoing guidance. This project is embedded in methodologies of encountering, forecasting, and whakapapa. It explores how a process-driven practice can nurture past and present genealogical ties for the sake of the generations to arrive in the future. In my practice, craft-making engages the mind and body simultaneously through crochet, sewing, braiding, and net-making. The interlocking of loops and the braiding of fabric strips are a re-emergence of me becoming a weaver – facilitated through donated familial clothes and textiles, temporal making, pūrākau, and collaboration. This exploration of intuitive making, within the acts of crafting, generates an awareness of my presence inside my lineage as a service for those who have come before and those who will follow after.