Kinbaku Friendship

Weaving Our Pains to Dress Each Other

My kinbaku friendship bracelet art installation at the Toronto Feminist Art Conference: Feminist Art from the Margins and Intersections.

The piece is entitled: “Weaving Our Pains to Dress Each Other: the craft and friendship of feminine dominance in co-creation”. A friendship bracelet made of bondage rope with Kikkou (tortoise shell body harness) and Mune nawa (breast bondage). Bringing the “kin” back to kinbaku.

Feminist Zine

I used video projection mapping art on the mannekins with words and illustrations from my zine. An exploration of power exchange and the art/healing work of sex work, an art, like many forms of feminine “crafts” that is not recognized as art. I read this spoken word poem at the closing of the art conference.

Exploring what it was like as a 16-year-old runaway Chinatown dominatrix, to play a role in exploring the childhood trauma of adults, in the black box theater of intimate secrets, a kinship of mutual yoke and emancipation – how my practice evolved to incorporate an ethic of care and boundary-setting, and what the adult-me is still grappling with in terms of the bond between pain/love, performing power to hold space for freedom, non-judgment, and healing.

Sketch: Working Arts

Grateful to have served as a Community Teaching Artist at Sketch: Working Arts in Toronto. Here are a few pics of my wonderful colleagues, setting up their exhibition pieces: