Contribute to a large-scale weaving artwork featured in Bay Area Now 9! Led by BAN9 artist Charlene Tan, visitors are invited to a workshop where they can co-create the Research and Remembering installation, an immersive woven structure that celebrates the visual language of Filipinx textile. Facilitators will guide participants through weaving patterns inspired by traditional indigenous Filipino design.
The patterns hold spiritual meaning, used for ceremonies, and inspired by a weaver’s dreams guided by weaving deity Fu Dalo, to whom this is a homage. The iconography comes from a t’nalak weaving pattern of Lang Dulay—her story and the T’boli community located near Lake Sebu in Southern Philippines. Dulay’s t’nalak narrative in part shares Tan’s of a city of diaspora, a community of many voices and paths, and a neighborhood with a history of displacement and inequity. As a Filipina-Chinese-American who has worked in the most economically and racially stratified arts sector, Tan makes visible the many Filipino workers who labor behind the scenes, as well as the many Fil-Am artists she has met.
Throughout the duration of BAN9, this weaving will evolve through a series of weaving workshops led by Tan, and co-facilitated by SOMCAN’s community engagement consultant and Reclaiming Our Space (ROSe) program coordinator Wilfred Galila along with BAN9 Curatorial Counsel member Erina Alejo.