Participatory installation, cardboard, milk paint, 2025.
Pictured above at the MIT Museum, as part of their After Dark Series
Made of cardboard and woven in community, this installation, a sort of basket fort, takes inspiration from the nests of weaver birds, using what is in abundance and learning from trial and error how to build and gather. An audio artwork, a poem read on loop titled We Too, Weaver Bird fills the room with found environmental sounds from a flock of Weaver Birds in sub-Saharan Africa.
Corrugated cardboard boxes were first introduced in the 1870s and slowly replaced wooden crates, and for the past 150 years, have become an introductory building toy for children who create new spaces and potentials out of them. Begin with what is abundant and can be used to make almost anywhere. I take inspiration from adventure playgrounds to imagine building with materials and processes that center accessibility, material-rooted scale, collaboration, and play. The installation was created in community weaving workshops, teaching hexagonal weaving often seen on cane chairs. Each panel is built to be assembled and connected with colorful “weavers” that can be randomly woven in and removed to flat-pack the form and begin again.
