Dream Tapestry
Threads, second hand clothes.
Commissioned by Waltham Forest Virtual Culture.
Chong Kwan collected descriptions of dreams that people had during lockdown, which were embroidered, some by participants, as hand sewn texts hidden in the inside seams and folds of clothes. Eventually the items of clothing will be donated to charity shops, so that people may come across and read or without knowledge, and wear and carry the embroidered dreams with them.
For many, the Covid-19 Emergency has been characterised by more intense and better remembered dreams, due to longer sleep times, less social interaction, and trying to process past, present and possible futures, at this moment of crisis and challenge. I am interested in how the covid emergency and the lockdown has been and is being experienced unconsciously. At a time when physical touch is severely restricted, I was interested in linking people through the bodily intimacy of clothes and night-time dreaming. Over 50 texts about people's lockdown dreams were collected, some poetic, others political, melancholy and fantastical. Most of the dream texts are between 30 – 50 words long. They are too beautifully written to cut-down, and it is important that each participants’ way of expressing their dreams are there in the work. The work has layers of intimacy, and the context of revealing and framing of the clothes and dreams feels important to the work. ‘Dream Tapestry’ is a work in which intimacy, detail, and revealing and showing and sharing personal dreams, through different dynamic iterations, both online and in situ.
