Garland magazine

11/07/2025

A journey across land with words and thread

Annette Peterson writes about five textile artists who weave a sensitive exhibition from text and thread.
https://garlandmag.com/a-journey-across-land-with-words-and-thread/

10/07/2025

Crochet therapy, with soundtrack

The Russian crochet artist Katika explains how she discovered a craft that helped unravel her emotions.
https://garlandmag.com/katika/

✿ Excerpts:

This project is a series of 15 crochet works created from fragments, leftovers, and previously unfinished or unrealised pieces made over the course of 11 years.

Each piece is accompanied by a folder containing a “psychiatric evaluation” not of myself, but of the artwork itself, imagined and written based on insights from sessions with my psychiatrist. Each work is also paired with a looping audio track, an obsessive melody from childhood, whether a fragment of a familiar song or a forgotten local tune. During the exhibition, these loops played consecutively.

This is not just crochet, it is an audio-visual-therapeutic archive, where each loop of yarn holds a memory, and each sound loop reflects an obsessive thought. The pieces have no titles; they are identified only by folder numbers: “Case 1”, “Case 2”, and so on. There is also a general folder for the project that contains an overview and background explanation.

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This piece reflects a deep inner conflict connected to attachment and its destructive potential. The central theme is a struggle with love addiction, whether emotional dependence or a need to dominate.

The story shows how rejection can lead to aggression that turns inward, where the aggressor becomes the victim.

There is also an ironic reference to both Tuxedo Mask and Elon Musk.

The stitched text reads: “Don’t get attached!”

Possible diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), self-harm tendencies.

Find out more in Garland Loop ✿

09/07/2025

Takashi Wakamiya ✿ Lacquer master and founder of Hikoju Makie

Bic Tieu pays tribute to Takashi Wakamiya, who was a key part of her own lacquer journey.
https://garlandmag.com/article/takashi-wakamiya/

✿ Excerpts:

Under Wakamiya’s leadership for over twenty years, Hikoju Makie operated as a collaborative workshop, producing exquisite lacquerware, from tea utensils and writing boxes to contemporary objects. Working with 15 skilled artisans, Wakamiya dedicated his life to preserving and innovating Japanese lacquer traditions.

Their renowned material mimicry technique renders lacquer to resemble natural surfaces.

Growing up, I was enchanted by the souvenir lacquer objects brought home from my parent’s travel from Vietnam. Instead of playing with toys, I was enthralled by the goldfish image on a shiny black surface.

My curiosity towards Japanese lacquerware really began when I came across an exquisite work in a beautiful publication during my undergraduate years studying design at the University of NSW.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

08/07/2025

The guardian tiger: Ancestral protection

Nani Puspasari is able to reconnect with her ancestors through ceramic installations that evoke time with grandparents.
https://garlandmag.com/article/the-guardian-tiger/

✿ Excerpts:

I was born in the Year of the Tiger, and my father must have believed in its strength because that image remains hanging in our family home to this day.

My paternal grandparents have always been distant figures,

My father often spoke of them, maintaining a simple ancestor table where he would pray, keeping their spirits alive through ritual.

Unlike him, I never had the chance to sit with my grandparents, to ask them my own questions, to hear their laughter or advice. So, I created *Tea Time with My Grandparents*, a ceramic installation that imagines the impossible: a moment where we share tea, where I can finally seek their wisdom, as my father once did.

During the exhibition, visitors became part of this evolving narrative by slipping their own secret memories into ceramic slots resembling celengan (piggy banks).

Living alone in Australia, far from family, these tiger works have become a way for me to honour my heritage, reflect on the traditions that shaped me, and keep the spirit of those who came before me close

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

08/07/2025

07/07/2025

The tale of Nneburube

Ngozi-Omeje incarnates the matriarchal Igbo story of the circle of connections that make a community.
https://garlandmag.com/article/the-tale-of-nneburube/

✿ Excerpts:

Driven by hunger and motherhood, Nneburube stole another basket of yam tubers from Ezenwoha’s yam ban. Being a shrewd man, Ezenwoha was provoked to wrath, and he cursed the thief through the village’s shrine to kill and eradicate the thief’s children.

These women, though trying to avoid the fate of Nneburube by not stealing, have invariably created another menace in society. However, neglecting the root, which is the womanhood and their struggles, sets forth negative energies that revolve around us.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

04/07/2025

Nonna’s Abundant Protection from the Malocchio

Celine Babet recreates the cornicello protection charm of her Sicilian ancestors in vibrant ceramic clusters.
https://garlandmag.com/article/cornicello/

✿ Excerpts:

Cornicellos have existed for centuries... The horn-shaped talisman, believed to offer protection against bad luck

I wear the symbol around my neck to ward off any negative energy someone might pass onto me. The phrase “you’ve got the mallochio” was often heard during family conversations whenever one was talking about experiencing headaches.

My cornicello necklace was gifted to me by my Nonna, as it is bad luck to buy one for yourself.

My work *‘Nonna’s Abundant Protection from the Malocchio’* depicts the cornicello symbol in abundance as hanging chillies.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

03/07/2025

Data archeology in clay

Using data visualisation, Guillaume Slizewicz re-embodies archaeology back into clay fragments.
https://garlandmag.com/article/data-archeology-in-clay/

✿ Excerpts:

Cross-sections of simple pottery fragments, viewed under polarized light, transform into something cosmic, mineral constellations trapped in clay.

When a robotic arm inscribes patterns on clay, it explores how new tools might become part of ancient material practices rather than rejecting tradition. Working with ceramics places one within one of humanity’s oldest continuous technological traditions.

In “Fragmented Memories,” the burning of academic papers to generate smoke for ceramic firing transforms specialized knowledge into sensory experience.

ceramic tablets from ancient Mesopotamia are perfectly legible while files from ten years ago languish on unreadable disks.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

02/07/2025

Finding Vomit Girl: A pilgrimage to the source of mộc mạc

Mai Nguyễn-Long takes on her journey to discover her lost connection to village culture in Vietnam.
https://garlandmag.com/article/moc-mac/

✿ Excerpts:

this ongoing project pays homage to my 1994 encounter with *đình* woodcarvings in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam—an experience that introduced me to the concept of *mộc mạc*. That year, excursions across more than thirteen different *đình* revealed woodcarvings so enchanting that they temporarily dislodged the war images and motifs of exclusionary diasporic politics that had come to shape my identity.

The making itself, particularly wedging and coiling, connected me with Mother Goddess (Đạo Mẫu) processes of engaging with and reimagining stories through dance.

Mộc mạc is a framework associated with the early nature goddesses of Vietnam

Through this journeying I have come to link *mộc mạc* with the history of resistance in Vietnam and thereby build my own personalised form of creative resilience.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here
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01/07/2025

Stories, theatre and worship: The sacred masks of Majuli

Aishani Gupta from MAP Academy writes about the fearsome masks of Assam, a tradition passed down for five centuries.
https://garlandmag.com/article/the-sacred-masks-of-majuli/

✿ Excerpts:

Evoking fear, awe, devotion and chagrin, these masks instruct onlookers in good, evil, morality and immorality. Some scholars have observed that aloukik masks manifest many facial expressions which are otherwise censured in Assamese society. As such, they become important cultural safety-valves, regulating the community’s feelings of desire, power, disdain and reverence.

The mask-making process uses locally available materials, including bamboo, wood, cloth, clay and cow dung, which have ensured the survival and continuity of this craft over generations. Frames are first crafted out of bamboo, and the final shapes are contoured using cloth, clay and cow dung. The surfaces of the finished masks are then smoothened using a bamboo file, and the details are painted using various vegetable dyes such as *hengul* (vermilion) and *hetul* (arsenic).

They believe that aloukik masks of ferocious demons and evil spirits are prone to quarrelling when kept in the dark. To propitiate them, the masks are placed in the namghar before and after every performance, worshipped with incense, prayers and chants. Once made, the masks are used for years, until they are worn out by insect damage or weather, in which case new ones are crafted while the old ones are ceremonially immersed in a nearby river or lake.

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Read more in G39 ✿ Ancestors are Here

30/06/2025

Timi Lantos ✿ Learning from clay in Japan

Liliana Morais writes about a Hungarian potter who moved to the legendary craft town of Mashiko to learn from its soil and people.
https://garlandmag.com/timi-lantos/

✿ Excerpts:

At Mashiko Ceramic Club, a hobby pottery school that also offers accommodation in a 150-year-old traditional Japanese farmhouse (kominka), the whole town became her teacher. The club is frequented not only by hobby potters who come on weekends for hands-on ceramic experiences, but also by young and aspiring potters without studios or kilns of their own, as well as international volunteers—many themselves also potters or pottery aficionados. The school often hosts day-long workshops with veteran potters from Mashiko and beyond, providing valuable opportunities for staff to learn by watching masters at work. This rich environment of sharing and exchange contrasts with the common stereotype of Japanese craft as an exclusive world where household secrets are tightly guarded from outsiders.

28/06/2025

Areta Wilkinson, Mau kaki, Neckpiece, 2013, oxidised sterling silver, flax bailing twine, 300 x 220 x 5mm

Happy Matariki ✨

Celebrate the Aotearoa festival to mark the rise of the Pleiades constellation by visiting Mahinga ✿ Stories from Te Moana nui e Kiwa in our Garden of Stories.
https://garlandmag.com/mahinga/

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