To imagine the landscape/seascape of islands at the Pacific Ocean.
Reflecting on the histories of islands reminds the influence of imperialism and colonialism.

Seabirds inhabit at sea and stay on an island during the breeding season. After feeding the nestling, they leave the island and return to the habitation at sea. There are many islands where seabirds inhabit the Pacific Ocean. From 1880 to 1920 in Japan, seabirds were overhunted due to be discovered their value as merchandise, including feathers for ornament and exported as a stuffed seabirds to Europe. Islands of seabirds' habitation had rich resources of phosphate, which was made with an accumulation of seabird excrement called guano. People discovered the value of guano, the raw material for fertiliser and gunpowder, so the islands became the mining target. The Izu islands and islands in the Pacific Ocean were over-mined by Japan, European countries, the U.S. and Australia because of rich phosphate resources.

In Japan, explorers of merchants invaded inhabited islands, which were part of the Izu Islands, and the Daito Islands, and then extended to the South Sea Islands to dream of making a fortune at a stroke. Invasion of land and mining resources were united, and it was the exact timing as breaking out of the World War in 1924. Japanese government dispatched troops to the South Sea Island, which was the German possessions, because of the relation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Interwoven images on textiles were referenced from archives on the internet. Some photos were documented for research of the Pacific area by Charles Maurice Young, an Oceanographer, from 1928 to 1929. Mining companies and the Australian Navy recorded others. Those photo archives were valuable documents of anthropological aspects, but, on the other hand, they must be documentation of the invasion.

These photograph archives appeared in the view of the people who photographed them, and an artist faces them as archive documents. Photos popped up as a result of searching depending on the category. Images were shown miscellaneously, at the same time, reading related written documents. Then, scraps of images were started to patchwork and evoke the collaged landscape/seascape—visualised images as artwork may shows the attitude of the relationship between archives and the artist.

Exploring possibilities through art practices to approach archived documents, people who documented and who was documented, with respect. Woven textile represents a gesture of weaving, including physical movement as labour. The physical response of weaving might show a possibility of engagement with archives. Interwoven images, which related to the textile's structure, evoke formative language to imagine another imaginary landscape/seascape.

The bush landscape interwoven textile was referenced from a photo taken by the artist at present in NSW. The layer structure of photo archives and the present bush landscape appears to be a united landscape of past and present based on woven textiles, like palimpsests. The installation, which consists of the digital image of the map and textiles, evokes to imagine the landscape/seascape of the Pacific Ocean.

“grand-mother island” project traces the trajectories of people who have crossed the Pacific Ocean, such as between Australia, Japan and Korea, focusing on how individual narratives are interwoven with history to create new communities.
Grandmother island constitutes an imaginary space that inherits and generates untold stories beyond the nation. According to Benedict Anderson, the nation is an imagined political community, where imagining a shared history strengthens a sense of national belonging. This project imagines space between nations, spaces of movement that expand our horizons. Using the metaphor and universal experience of the grandmother, it brings to life stories of connected pasts that open us to others.

Since 2017 Haji Oh has engaged in an extended series of creation and installation work titled ‘Grand-Mother Island Project’, in which she traces the trajectories of people who have crossed the Pacific Ocean between Japan, Korea, Nauru, Torres Strait, Australia, and places in-between.
‘Grand-Mother Island Project: Chapter 1- Nautical Map’ is the first part of this project. Comprising three textile elements – ‘Textile as Map j.i (Jeju Island, Korea)’, ‘Textile as Map t.i (Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia)’ and ‘Textile as Map Mt.k (Mount Kiera, NSW, Australia)’, the work traces the trajectories of island and ocean crossings between Japan, Korea, and Australia. It focuses on the individual narratives interwoven with global histories to create new communities.
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.

Since 2017 Haji Oh has engaged in an extended series of creation and installation work titled ‘Grand-Mother Island Project’, in which she traces the trajectories of people who have crossed the Pacific Ocean between Japan, Korea, Nauru, Torres Strait, Australia, and places in-between.
‘Grand-Mother Island Project: Chapter 1- Nautical Map’ is the first part of this project. Comprising three textile elements – ‘Textile as Map j.i (Jeju Island, Korea)’, ‘Textile as Map t.i (Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia)’ and ‘Textile as Map Mt.k (Mount Kiera, NSW, Australia)’, the work traces the trajectories of island and ocean crossings between Japan, Korea, and Australia. It focuses on the individual narratives interwoven with global histories to create new communities.
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.

Since 2017 Haji Oh has engaged in an extended series of creation and installation work titled ‘Grand-Mother Island Project’, in which she traces the trajectories of people who have crossed the Pacific Ocean between Japan, Korea, Nauru, Torres Strait, Australia, and places in-between.
‘Grand-Mother Island Project: Chapter 1- Nautical Map’ is the first part of this project. Comprising three textile elements – ‘Textile as Map j.i (Jeju Island, Korea)’, ‘Textile as Map t.i (Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia)’ and ‘Textile as Map Mt.k (Mount Kiera, NSW, Australia)’, the work traces the trajectories of island and ocean crossings between Japan, Korea, and Australia. It focuses on the individual narratives interwoven with global histories to create new communities.
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.

This is Chapter 2 of the Grand-mother Island Project, entitled “Floating Forest” , consisting of seven panels of textiles. Each panel is 45cm x 180cm. The Floating Forest is an imaginary forest consisting of the shadows of trees reflected on water. The shadow of the forest is a metaphor of the visible and invisible world. It suggests the existence of beings and changes shape depending on the angle of the light; this alludes to the state of untold histories.
The textiles were woven using a back strap weaving loom, which incorporates the weaver’s body in the process. In this method, the warp threads move back and forth between two rods in a spiral. The textile often evokes time and space; the four-selvaged cloth represents this concept in a spiral structure, not one direction. The
gradation effect of the colours in this work was created by bleaching warp threads dyed black. This black dye is made up of particles of various colours, creating an effect of various degrees of shadow. Made as a metaphor for untold histories, “Floating Forest” emerges by weaving the weft between the spiral structure of the warp, repeatedly dyed and bleached, and raising the black dyed warp threads.

Untitled (2019) is part of a larger series entitled A House of Memory Traces, the third chapter of Oh’s ongoing grand-mother island project (2017-Present), which traces the memories of migrants across the Pacific. A House of Memory Traces follows the memories of war brides who emigrated from Japan after the second world war. Untitled is the only figurative piece included in A House of Memory Traces, hanging high above the viewer to form the vague silhouette of a woman’s body, with a long braid falling to the floor as it unravels like a memory lost to time.
Untitled makes clear the variety of labor-intensive approaches Oh has to weaving, as well as the importance of unraveling as a metaphor for deconstructing memory. Starting from spools of black warp threads leading loosely upwards to where the artist has woven them into a flat textile, the work demonstrates the importance of the four-selvage edge in textile works. Four-selvage cloth refers to textile made with a self-finishing edge that prevents it from unraveling or fraying on all four sides. The woven part of Untitled ends abruptly and tapers off with only the warp threads leading down to the floor; the material appears to be weighted down as the artist condenses it into a thick braid, eventually cascading onto the floor in a disassembled heap, creating palpable tension that contrasts the whimsical feeling of the threads unwinding from the spools. Oh plays with making and un-making in this piece, harnessing the shifts in texture and empty spaces between the threads as a visible reminder of the nonlinear, gap-filled process of passing down transnational histories.

“A House of Memory Traces is Chapter 3 of the Grand-mother Island project. It consists of textiles and recorded audio voices of 45 women, reading the texts taken from the National Library of Australia collection, “Nikkei kokusai kekkon shinbokukai nyusureta” (Japanese International Marriage Fellowship Club Newsletter, 1989-1994). These newsletters were written by Japanese war brides in Australia and other countries. They might have received the newsletters at home and spent time reading them sitting on the chair in their living room or kitchen. They shared their past experiences and present time of life through the newsletters. These newsletters are now part of the collection at the library. It enables people to access their experiences to feel and share. The installation evokes to imagine the time spent in their private space and their experiences.”
The audio voices were recorded through the reading workshop held during the artist-in-residence program in the Art Tower Mito, Japan. A wide age range of members from the local community participated in the workshop, including migrants and those of migrant heritage.

“A House of Memory Traces is Chapter 3 of the Grand-mother Island project. It consists of textiles and recorded audio voices of 45 women, reading the texts taken from the National Library of Australia collection, “Nikkei kokusai kekkon shinbokukai nyusureta” (Japanese International Marriage Fellowship Club Newsletter, 1989-1994). These newsletters were written by Japanese war brides in Australia and other countries. They might have received the newsletters at home and spent time reading them sitting on the chair in their living room or kitchen. They shared their past experiences and present time of life through the newsletters. These newsletters are now part of the collection at the library. It enables people to access their experiences to feel and share. The installation evokes to imagine the time spent in their private space and their experiences.”
The audio voices were recorded through the reading workshop held during the artist-in-residence program in the Art Tower Mito, Japan. A wide age range of members from the local community participated in the workshop, including migrants and those of migrant heritage.

This is Chapter 4 of the grand-mother island project, entitled Seabird Habitats. It consists of 7 pieces of textiles and a digital projection image referenced from photo archives collections.
The layer structure of photo archives and the present bush landscape taken by the artist at present in NSW were interwoven, and it appears to be a united landscape of past and present, like palimpsests. The installation, which consists of the digital image of the map and textiles, evokes to imagine the landscape/seascape of the Pacific Ocean.

“In 2004, my first trip to Jeju-Island
I wear my grandmother’s and mother’s chima chogori
And they swell with the Island’s wind
I’ll spin these memories
These threads that will someday become my skin”
— Haji Oh, Kuruyama Museum of Art, Okayama, 2019

“In 2004, my first trip to Jeju-Island, I wear my grandmother’s and mother’s chima chogori, And they swell with the Island’s wind, I’ll spin these memories, These threads that will someday become my skin” — Haji Oh, Kuruyama Museum of Art, Okayama, 2019