Weaving Connections

Streams become rivers, become the ocean, just as hair becomes a braid. Continuous cycles reflect our interconnectedness across time and beyond spatial divisions in which weaving and braiding manifest interdependencies, making visible and palpable, embodying connection in our hands and bodies, letting it expand beyond rational understanding.

In this spirit, “Weaving Connections” is part of the artist’s long-term development of a body of performative films and research that explore how the cultural imaginary in Germany has represented and framed Indigenous people in mainstream media and culture. Looking critically at the historical formation of stereotypes and fantasies about Indigenous people since German colonialism, and their close ties to the construction of a German national identity and culture, this body of work confronts attendant forms of violence. Fabulated identities come into play when museums and institutions draw on historical and emotional ties to connect a German audience with what they exhibit and store, while simultaneously refusing to let go of ideologies that prevent them from returning what does not belong to them.

“Weaving Connections” expresses the need for a vital shift in perspective, not only on forms of violence but how we act and reenact them, when we disconnect ourselves from other ways of being. Institutions replicate separations, dichotomies and categorizations that fracture us and the more-than-human world. The artist follows the water’s path of movement and transformation, creating a continuous cycle where waters are never truly separate but exist in a state of perpetual connection. 

Threads in blue tones interwoven with black braids recall both flowing water and hair. Braids are a recurring element in the artist’s trajectory, allowing her to explore how individual and collective identities come into existence. The washing of braids reflects the water’s ability to forge relationships between all living beings, as well as its spiritual power to transform, purify, and recreate. A collective act of preparing, braiding, and washing the braids before being woven into the textiles reminds us of the care and presence this act of transformation requires. The three-channel video unfolds three performative moments into images, creating a constant flow of shifting visual relationships. 

Ultimately, “Weaving Connections” is a gesture, a movement. It expresses endless variations of entanglements that move in different formations through the space, reminding us that there is never just one way to display and tell a narrative of change and transformation, nor one single perspective from which to engage. The non-linearity of this work questions our definition of time within the web of connections in which we exist, pointing beyond a linear understanding of past, present, and future and the divisions made between them.

Our imaginaries, fantasies, and projections are more than mere fiction; they are actors, they have agency—and just as they can be violent, shaping today’s politics, movements, and actions—they can also be appropriated, reclaimed, and transformed. They offer a path toward balance and equilibrium. Let us listen, feel, and manifest the imaginations that flow from the paths of waters and oceans.

Live Performance

Performance Schedule:

Ocean Space
Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice

Exhibition: Tide of Returns,
TBA21 / Ocean Space Venice