My affinity for textile work is deeply rooted in my formative years. Growing up beside my mother as she worked at her sewing machine, the rhythmic sounds and tactile nature of fabric became my first language. I began sewing my own dolls at the age of six, and over time, the needle, thread, and loom transitioned from domestic tools into my "brushes"—primary instruments through which I communicate with the world. Beyond personal nostalgia, I am drawn to weaving because it functions as a profound act of mediation. For me, the interlacing of threads is a way to bridge the past and the present, creating a tangible connection between human nature and the complex narratives of the tropics. While other art forms offer different possibilities, textile work allows me to literally and metaphorically "bind" together history, labor, and ecology in a way that is both intimate and monumental.

In Pineapple (2025), I explore the plant as a site of cultural translation. Drawing from my heritage in a family of pineapple farmers, I am fascinated by how this fruit was perceived when first introduced to China. Lacking botanical references, early poets described its alien appearance using the imagery of mythical creatures- Phoenix. I invoke these classical descriptions to explore the mythopoetic qualities of the plant, seeing it as a living creature from shared memory rather than just a crop. By weaving with pineapple fiber, I replicate the fruit’s armor-like exterior—once likened to celestial scales—as a metaphor for resilience. This work serves as a bridge, connecting the tropical soil of my home with historical imagination, transforming an agricultural byproduct into a tactile vessel for cultural and colonial narratives.

"The fruit is patterned throughout its body and grows closely hugging the pillar-like stem. Its leaves emerge from the top, spreading out as densely as a phoenix's tail, and it possesses a pale yellow hue."

This passage is primarily sourced from Fen Gan Yu Hua (1709), written by the early Qing Dynasty scholar Wang Shizhen. Inspired by the classical literary accounts mentioned above, I have translated these descriptions into a pictorial textile work. I reimagine how the populations perceived and interpreted this 'newcomer crop' through their own traditional knowledge systems prior to the era of colonization.

The passage from Wang Shizhen’s Fen Gan Yu Hua 分甘餘話(1709) serves as a primary conceptual map for my work. I am intrigued by how the pineapple, a "newcomer crop," was filtered through traditional knowledge systems before the colonial era. By describing the fruit’s structure as "hugging a pillar" and its leaves as "dense as a phoenix's tail," Wang Shizhen transformed a botanical curiosity into a cultural icon. I translate this into textile by treating the loom as a site of re-imagination. Using pineapple fiber, I replicate the "pale yellow hue" and the rhythmic, scaly textures described in the text. This process moves beyond mere illustration; it is an act of reconstructing a pre-colonial gaze. My weaving materializes these classical metaphors, turning the literary "phoenix's tail" into a tactile reality that honors both historical imagination and the labor history of the land.

The materiality of my work is a dialogue between self-identity and industry. As a descendant of a pineapple farming family, my practice is a direct response to my heritage. Since pineapple fiber is not commercially produced in Malaysia, I source leaves locally and personally perform the arduous task of hand-scraping the fibers. This intimate labor is a ritual of reconnection to my family’s labourous history. However, I also acknowledge the plant’s contemporary evolution. Pineapple fiber has recently emerged as a popular sustainable material in Southeast Asia, utilized in modern factory production. In my practice, I blend and spun my hand-extracted fibers with factory-produced ones. This intentional mixing symbolizes the transition of the pineapple from a colonial plantation crop to a modern eco-material. By combining the raw, irregular texture of hand-work with the refined industrial fiber, I examine the shifting relationship between human labor, environmental sustainability, and the global market, turning agricultural "waste" into a complex narrative of resilience.

To navigate the relationship between humanity and the tropics, I focus on the "tension of the soil", investigating how global trade and plantation industries have reshaped our natural landscapes, intertwining with ecological systems and colonial labor histories. I navigate this relationship through the physical act of weaving. By using pineapple fiber, I bridge the gap between the wildness of the environment and the structured labor of human industry. Nature, to me, it carries social and cultural knowledge; it is a witness to the displacement of species and the endurance of migrant communities. My work serves as a tactile meditation on how we inhabit the tropics as participants in a complex, often fractured, ecological and historical dialogue.