Quan Yin's Vow 2014: Nexus Fiber Art 2014

The existential sublime perceived in the absence of the empty garment and the temporality and impermanence signified through material and form was explored in artwork Quan Yin’s Vow. Research into cultures of dress following exploratory visits to the Ukraine and Turkey developed a specific interest in the form of the kaftan, a garment that for centuries was the everyday clothing of commoners, royalty and officers of religion alike across most of Europe and Asia through to China. The kaftan is significant as a style that has existed since early Mesopotamian times and to the Ottoman Turks it was a symbol of status and power. The kaftan as a symbol represents the endless, enduring and immortal. Quan Yin’s Vow is an unwearable and oversized garment as installation as if created for a distorted and stretched god-like deformed body. In its installation it implies a mythological creature that is absent. In setting it was hung above head height as if an angelic being or mythological presence. The name in Quan Yin in Chinese means ‘The one who perceives the sounds of the world’. The work in material, form and name talks about the perpetual and timeless references of the enduring but also the impermanent conveyed through the garment.
The artwork Quan Yin’s Vow was exhibited in the group exhibition Nexus Fibreart 2014 held at the Kurokawa INN Museum, Kyouseinosato, Fukuoka, Japan from 2nd March to 31st May 2014 (fig. 4). The exhibition included a small number of invited artists from the UK, Norway and Germany alongside artists from South Korea and Japan. All invited artists use fabrics, fibres and cloth in their works. The exhibition was curated by internationally known fibre artist Kakuko Iishi who regularly collaborates with international artists with exhibition across Asia, the USA and Europe.