Alucidating Haji Oh's ongoing body of work 'The Grand-Mother Island Project'

The ‘Grand-Mother Island’ constitutes an imaginary space that inherits and generates untold stories. The ‘islands’ are metaphors for political and personal relationships, as well as for spaces to explore both private and shared histories beyond the nation-state. Political Scientist Benedict Anderson considers the nation to be an “imagined political community where belief in a shared history strengthens the sense of national belonging”. The ‘Grand-Mother Island Project’ conceives spaces between nations as spaces of movement that expand our personal horizons. Using the metaphor and universal experience of ‘the grandmother’, the project aims to bring to life stories of a connected past, opening us to others. Oh’s meticulous and labour-intensive process of creating the textile works underscores the narrative of the on-going project. The shape of the islands emerge through the dying and bleaching of the warp thread, which forms part of the preparation for the weaving process. In four-selvaged cloth (a finished textile that has no cut edges or hems), the spiral of the warp thread is intersected by the weft thread, symbolizing the continuity of memory and time and the convergence of the past with the present. The resulting woven works are an embodiment of space, time, and memory.