August, 2024. In response to Kazumi Tanaka and Jayoung Yoon
Elizabeth Wiet is a curator, writer, and editor based in New York. Interdisciplinary in both method and scope, her research focuses on feminist and queer art, time-based media, and art from the Middle East and its diasporas. She is currently Director of Exhibitions and Fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery, Deputy Editor at Topical Cream, and Contributing Editor at Bidoun.
I so loved reading your correspondence about your recent engagement with craft practices that have centuries-long history—particularly horsehair weaving in your case, Jayoung, and indigo dying in yours, Kazumi. You both discuss how these practices link you to longer heritages, as well as your own families. My mother suffered a stroke at the start of this year, and so reading about your care for your mother, Kazumi, resonated deeply with me.
The intergenerationality that undergirds both of your practices brings to my mind a verse from the American poet Hart Crane. In “My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” he ponders the scene of finding old correspondence from his grandmother tucked away in a corner of the attic on a rainy night. For Crane, to commune with our forebears requires a delicate touch. We must be cognizant of the fact that the thread that links us from present to past is as delicate as a single hair—the very material that Jayoung is currently using to create sculptural installations.
Over the greatness of such spaceÂ
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.Â
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth