Cheong See Min and Silät: Threads of Nature
Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to present Threads of Nature as part of London Gallery Weekend 2026. Bringing together works by Malaysian fibre artist Cheong See Min and the Northern Argentinian collective Silät, the exhibition explores how textile practices carry histories of place, labour, and cultural knowledge across generations. Working with pineapple leaf fibre and chaguar respectively, both artists treat weaving not simply as a means of making images, but as a way of recording relationships between people, land, and material. Through processes of gathering, stripping, spinning, dyeing, and weaving, fibre becomes both medium and witness, bearing traces of ecological systems, inherited traditions, and lived experience.
At the centre of the exhibition, See Min presents works that transform hand-processed pineapple fibre into intricate woven compositions shaped by personal and collective memory. Descended from a family of pineapple farmers, she approaches weaving as an act of translation, converting photographs, stories, and fragments of family history into tactile form. Rooted in the lived experiences of generations of relatives who worked the land, her practice reflects on the plantation economies, labour histories, and ecological transformations that have shaped tropical landscapes across Southeast Asia. Newly commissioned for the exhibition, Wardian Case - Harvest (2026) draws on an archival family photograph depicting relatives at work in a pineapple plantation. Suspended threads and subtle variations in tension dissolve the image into a shifting field of presence and absence, while the work’s architectural structure recalls a storage hut once used by her family. Merging photography, architecture, and fibre, the installation reflects on the ways memory is preserved, transformed, and transmitted through material culture. Threads of Nature marks See Min’s first gallery exhibition in the United Kingdom.
Presented in dialogue with See Min, the works of Silät emerge from a collective model of making led by Claudia Alarcón and developed among more than one hundred Wichí women weavers in Northern Argentina. Working with chaguar fibre harvested from the Gran Chaco forest, the collective expands ancestral weaving traditions through collaborative processes that allow multiple makers to contribute to a single work. Their textiles draw on the visual language of the traditional yica bag while opening new possibilities for scale, abstraction, and collective authorship. At once acts of cultural continuity and innovation, the works embody forms of knowledge inseparable from both community and the fragile ecosystems in which chaguar grows.
Across the exhibition, weaving emerges as a form of transmission: a means of carrying memory, labour, and ecological knowledge through time. Though shaped by distinct cultural and geographic contexts, See Min and Silät share an understanding of fibre as a living archive, holding stories of people, land, and survival within its threads. Bringing these practices into dialogue, Threads of Nature reflects on the fragile yet enduring bonds that connect generations to one another and to the environments that sustain them.
Cheong See Min (b. 1994, Johor, Malaysia) holds an MA from Tainan National University of Art in Taiwan (2020). She was shortlisted for Bakat Muda Sezaman Young Contemporaries (2019) and the International Biennale Exhibition of Micro Textile Art Scythia, Ukraine (2021). Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions including After the Pineapple at Warin Lab (2025, Thailand); Of Thread and Stone at New Taipei City Art Museum (2026, Taipei); Ames Yavuz Gallery at Art SG (2026, Singapore); The Calling of Home at Tina Kim Gallery (2025, New York); Ames Yavuz Gallery at Art SG (2025, Singapore); Between the Lines at Appetite (2024, Singapore); A Seed, a Shift and a Lost Pineapple at Institutum (2023, Singapore); Communities in the Making at esea contemporary (2023, Manchester); The Labyrinths of Touch at Balai Seni Maybank (2023, Kuala Lumpur); and Filled in Absence at Yancheng Black & White Gallery (2021, Taiwan). Recent residencies include Gasworks (London, UK, 2023); Rimbun Dahan (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2022); and Islands Art Residency (Taichung, Taiwan, 2021).
Silät (Argentina, collective formed 2023) is currently the subject of a comprehensive solo exhibition at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and features in the 59th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Silät and their founder Claudia Alarcón have been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Gund at Kenyon College, Ohio (2025) and the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK (2025), as well as group exhibitions at Guggenheim Bilbao, (2026); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2025); Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere at the Venice Biennale (2024); MALBA–Puertos, Buenos Aires (2024); Guild Hall, NY (2024); Another Space, NY (2023); and the Ford Foundation, NY (2024). Works by Alarcón and Silät are in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts; Denver Art Museum; The Gund at Kenyon College; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MALBA Collection, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Salta, Argentina; Museu de arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP); Nasher Museum of Art; and RISD Museum.
