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.

This artwork is textile-based project tracing and examining the history of pineapple plantations and foregrounding the everyday lives and labour of coolies or farmers within the plantation industry in the early 20th century. In these textiles woven with blended pineapple fibers, layers of imagery emerge within the side silhouette of Wardian case: I follow the traces of the tropical fruit to weave a portrait of forgotten history and my family’s personal memory.

Wardian Case - Harvest (2026) examines the 20th-century pineapple plantation industry by foregrounding the everyday lives and labor of the "coolies" and farmers. Utilizing blended pineapple fibers, the work materializes the physical toll of this industry within the silhouette of a Wardian case—the very tool that enabled colonial plant displacement. Layers of imagery emerge through the weave, including a portrait of my mother and her family working on a plantation. This personal memory serves as a testament to a landscape that has since been erased and replaced by palm oil cultivation. By using fiber extracted from the plant itself, the arduous labor of cultivation was translated into a tactile form. The textile becomes a vessel for a "forgotten history," bridging the structural history of colonial plantations with the intimate, lived experiences of my own lineage.

The Wardian Case, invented by Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in 1829, was a portable glazed protective enclosure that revolutionized 19th-century botany. Before its invention, transporting live plants across oceans was nearly impossible due to sea spray and fluctuating temperatures. This innovation acted as the "shipping container" of the colonial era, enabling the global movement of economic crops like tea, rubber, and pineapple. For my practice, the Wardian Case is a potent symbol of human intervention and the ecological displacement caused by colonial trade. It represents the literal "encasement" of nature for transport, serving as a precursor to the plantation systems I investigate in my work.

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.