Fermented Flower presents a textile and audio installation, installed in a soil bed along with a dandelion liquor. The woven tapestry composites images drawn from archival research, with reference to the painful history of Chinese indentured labour, as part of a longer perspective on black slavery systems and the ongoing exploitation of migrant workers. The core narrative of weaving is based on one particular Korean shamanistic tradition that utilises flora to draw in, and then expel, the spirit of madness and resentment which arises from suffering. This is detailed in the appliqué of cockles in reference to the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster of 2004, alongside the names of the Chinese victims, and the hand-embroidered healing motifs of dandelion and the holmskioldia plant, reclaimed from its colloquial racist name – Coolie Cap.

The detailed tapestry and accompanying audio of symbolic bell chimes evoke references of traditional Asian religious murals, which situate scenarios and storylines to form a spiritual and earthly cosmology, conspiring an alternative planetary ancestry that dissolves prejudicial categories and hierarchies, allowing interspecies care.

* Installation composed of 3m wide x 2m high embroidered tapestry, sound, and dandelion liquor on the soil bed that spills approx 5m wide.

* Collaboration with Taey Iohe

* Commissioned by FACT Liverpool with the support of public funds from Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme project Artsformation.

* Exhibited in Future Ages Will Wonder (FACT 2021, UK) curated by Annie Yael Kwan / Local in Making 일시적 개입 (ARKO Art Centre 2022, Korea).

* Fermented Flower was featured in the ArtAsiaPacific magazine March/April issue in the spotlight section ‘Up Close’.