A Will Made Visible: Women in Diaspora - A Review of"Twined Will in the Wind"
Date: 19/09/2026
Writer: 陈玥Cynthia Chen
Keywords: diaspora / intergenerational inheritance / material culture / ecofeminism
Twined Will in the Wind brings together the diasporic experience of Asian women, drawingcultural narratives long positioned outside the European mainstream back into focus. Theexhibition is staged at Somers Gallery, an independent project space that has primarilychampioned Latin American art, marking a notable shift in the gallery's usual focus. Drawingon their own experiences, curator Liyuan Sun and co-curator Joy Yiming Han take the Asiandiaspora as their subject, selecting cross-media works in textile, photography, painting, andinstallation by artists from South Asia and East Asia. These works begin with concreteproductive processes closely tied to traditional domestic labour and gendered divisions ofwork, sewing, layering, printing, and weaving. From there, they extend the curators' ownlived experience outward into historical memory, migration, and the ecological environment.Together, they tie a shared 'women's will': the capacity to leave persistent traces through thebody and material, and, in doing so, to quietly shift established order.
Visible through the space's floor-to-ceiling windows is Yang-En Hume'sHolding, Marking,the first work to greet visitors. This textile installation, built from a wooden frame andstitched fabric, incorporates vividly patterned Singaporean batik alongside recycled materials,clothing worn before pregnancy that no longer fits, and postpartum bedding, brought togetherin response to a quilt sewn for the artist by her grandmother in childhood. Nearby,Redacted IandRedacted IIIare cast directly from the artist's own hands, intended to record the traces ofmotherhood and domestic labour. For Hume, who holds dual Australian and Singaporeanheritage, these textiles connect not only to the handcraft traditions of the women in herfamily; the frame, built from Indonesian Meranti timber, concrete blocks, and bronze wedges,also carries within it the historical residue of colonial trade.
Twined Will in the Wind, installation shot 展览现场
同样从具体而微的私人经验出发，艺术家Priyal Patel的两件纺织作品交织着个人经验与代际传承间的复杂关系。出生于印度古吉拉特邦的Patel在《怪异女人纱丽》（The Weird Woman Saree）中，将纱丽从一种代代相传的南亚文化符号转化为关于女性身体、记忆与继承的私人档案。作品源于她与从事布料制作工厂的父亲Vipul Patel的一次谈话。当父亲提出为她参加皇家艺术学院毕业展印制一件衣服时，她选择了女性穿着的纱丽，代表身处异乡的自己，以及从未真正见过、却始终牵动她的外祖母。纱丽，承载着悲伤、评判、爱、照料与抵抗等交织的经验。
Working from an equally specific, intimate starting point, Priyal Patel presents two textileworks that entangle personal experience with the complexities of generational inheritance.Born in Gujarat, India, Patel transforms the saree inThe Weird Woman Saree,from a SouthAsian cultural symbol passed down through generations, into a private archive of the femalebody, memory, and inheritance. The work grew out of a conversation with her father, VipulPatel, who works in textile manufacturing. When he offered to print a garment for hergraduate show at the Royal College of Art, she chose the saree worn by women, a garmentstanding in for herself, displaced from home, and for a grandmother she never truly knew, yetwho has never stopped shaping her. The saree here carries an interwoven experience of grief,judgment, love, care, and resistance.
在Priyal的另一件作品《重新夺回》（Reclaiming）中，其布料回收自其父亲布料场内废弃的布料，然而，预设的茜草与铁锈红棕色随着天然染料逐渐褪去，最终偏离了最初的设想。这种偏离恰恰构成作品有趣的部分：父亲的布料被女儿继承，却在新的使用方式中发生了变化。这一过程完成了对父权制社会的重新审判，同时建立了一个将废弃的工业制品收集并用天然染料重新加工的女性化表达。
In Patel's second work,Reclaiming, the fabric is salvaged from offcuts discarded at herfather's textile mill. The intended rust-red-brown hue of madder gradually faded as the naturaldye settled, drifting from its original plan. It is precisely this drift that gives the work itscharge: fabric inherited from the father, reworked by the daughter, transformed throughnewfound uses. In this process, the work stages a quiet re-examination of patriarchalstructures, while also establishing a feminised mode of production, one that gathers discardedindustrial material and reprocesses it through natural dye.
Priyal Patel，The Weird Woman Saree 怪异⼥⼈纱丽，Screen printed with natural dyes on handloom cotton，以天然染料在⼿织棉布上丝⽹印刷，2025（left)Priyal Patel，Reclaiming 重新夺回，Lino print with sticlac dyed reclaimed viscose, logwood and madder，使⽤版画技法印刷于染⾊再⽣粘胶纤维上，染料包括苏⽊和茜草，2025(right)
从纱丽上的手工印染，到拼布、缝纫与刺绣，展览中反复出现的“手”指向一种具体的劳作经验——身体如何介入材料，又如何在材料中留下痕迹。另一侧，艺术家朱伊茗则通过摄影、纺织等媒介讨论“手”的劳动。如在《交织的劳作》（Interwoven Labour）中，她将蚕吐丝结茧这一原初的生产过程，与自身的手工缝纫经验并置，以手部特定的动作回应女性长期参与的纺织工作，蚕与人的劳动在这里彼此映照：一种被工业生产体系不断重新组织的生命活动，也成为重新理解女性身体与劳动历史的入口。
From the hand-dyeing of the saree to patchwork, stitching, and embroidery, the recurring presence of “the hand” throughout the exhibition carries its own symbolism. It points to a specific labour experience, how the body enters into material, and how it leaves its trace there in turn. Elsewhere, Yiming Zhu addresses the labour of the “hand” through photography and textile. In Interwoven Labour, she places the silkworm's original act of production, spinning its cocoon, alongside her own experience of hand-sewing. Through this specific gesture of the hand, she responds to women's long history of involvement in textile work. Here, the labour of the silkworm and human mirror one another: a form of life constantly reorganised by industrial systems of production, and, at the same time, an entry point for rethinking the history of women's bodies and labour.
Yiming Zhu 朱伊茗，Interwoven Labour 交织的劳作，Print on canvas, sewing with thread, cocoon, cotton fabric，⽤蚕茧和棉布在印刷后的画布上缝制，2026
展览中不同艺术家在地理背景上的跨度，不断延伸至人与土地、植物、动物和水之间的关系，策展人孙立源也将生态女性主义的视角纳入叙事中。特别是对于有着生态实践背景的艺术家Sohyun Kim，这种联系尤为明显。在她的作品《我们再次渴望感知Yaksumul》中，这件雕塑喷泉作品让水在一个封闭的系统中持续循环。“Yaksumul”在韩语中意为“药水”，被认为是具有疗愈作用的天然泉水。在进入作品后，水不再自由地从土地中流出，而是被置于人工结构中，沿着同一条路径不断循环。这种受限的循环对应着城市身体的处境——持续运转，却始终处于口渴、疲惫，或与滋养自身的环境相脱离的状态。
The geographic range of the artists in the exhibition extends further still, into the relationships between people and land, plants, animals, and water, with curator Liyuan Sun bringing an ecofeminist perspective into the exhibition's narrative. This connection is especially pronounced in the work of Sohyun Kim, whose practice is rooted in ecological engagement. In we long to sense that Yaksumul again, a sculptural fountain keeps water in continuous circulation within a closed system. "Yaksumul," in Korean, means "medicine solution," referring to natural spring water believed to hold healing properties. Once drawn into the work, the water no longer flows freely from the earth but is instead held within an artificial structure, circulating endlessly along the same path. This constrained circulation mirrors the condition of the body in the city: continuously running, yet perpetually thirsty, exhausted, or cut off from the environment that once sustained it.
Sohyun Kim，we long to sense that Yaksumul again 我们再次渴望感知Yaksumul，Part of a fallen Indian bean tree, PVC hose, Beet root, Resin, Water，pump, Stainless steel, Electricity and More-than-human world，2025（left）
Sohyun Kim，Thirsty Feet ⼜渴的脚，Part of a fallen Indian bean tree, pigment 掉落的印度⾖树树枝，颜料，2026（right）
她的另一件作品《口渴的脚》（Thirsty Feet）则进一步延续了对于耗竭身体的关注。作品中的木材同样取自伦敦大学金史密斯学院于2024年10月19日倒下的一棵印度紫荆树（Catalpa bignonioides）。艺术家将树木、颜料与其他材料以一种温和、甚至略显摇摇欲坠的方式组合起来，试图创造一种让观者放慢速度，与那些因为耗竭、流离或不再具有生产力而经常被忽视的身体相遇的情境。树木与人的身体在这里共享着一种相似的处境：它们都可能因为无法继续“生产”而被从原有系统中移除，但它们的存在并不会因此失去意义。
Kim's second work, Thirsty Feet, extends this attention to the exhausted body further still. The timber used in the piece comes from an Indian bean tree (Catalpa bignonioides) that fell at Goldsmiths, University of London, on 19 October 2024. The artist assembles the wood, pigment, and other materials in a gentle, almost precarious arrangement, seeking to slow the viewer down and bring them into contact with bodies that are often overlooked, whether through exhaustion, displacement, or a loss of productive capacity. Tree and human body share a similar condition here: both risk being removed from the systems that once kept them when they can no longer "produce," yet neither loses meaning as a result.
Sohyun Kim，Kiss Upon a Wind 风的⼀吻，Acrylic and oil on canvas and organza 以丙烯和油彩绘于画布及欧根纱上，2026
韩国艺术家Yoona Kwon则将个人记忆与自然元素稍纵即逝的相遇置于绘画语境中。《风的一吻》（A Kiss Upon a Wind）借由欧根纱半透明、轻盈的质地，营造出一种难以捉摸的视觉感受。层叠的纱幕既模糊了有机形态的轮廓，使画面形成若隐若现的视觉节奏，又从抽象语言层面对应着自然、记忆与身份的流动。
Korean artist Yoona Kwon places personal memory and fleeting encounters with the natural world within the language of painting. In A Kiss Upon a Wind, the translucent, delicate texture of organza produces a visual sensation that resists easy grasp. The layered veils of fabric both blur the contours of organic form, generating a shifting visual rhythm between visibility and concealment, and echoes the fluidity of nature, memory, and identity.
尽管展览中的纱丽、织物、缝纫等元素很容易被归入传统的女性视觉符号与装饰性表达中，但若将视角转向展览作品背后的文化语境，以及材料本身所携带的历史属性，或许能够看到更多层次。这些来自亚洲不同地区的艺术家借由各自的材料实践，将迁徙、劳动、身体、家庭与记忆等经验彼此串联，并由此形成一种跨越身份与地域的、在具体生活经验中形成的“女性意志”。
Elements such as the saree, textile, and stitching running through the exhibition might easily be read within conventional, decorative registers of feminine visual symbolism. But turning toward the cultural context behind these works, and the historical weight carried by the materials themselves, a far richer reading begins to emerge, one the curator invites us into. Through their respective material practices, these artists, drawn from different regions across Asia, weave together experiences of migration, labour, the body, family, and memory. What emerges is a 'women's will' that moves across identity and geography, shaped entirely within the specificity of lived experience.
“意志”原本是一个自圣奥古斯丁时期以来不断演变的形而上概念，但在展览中被策展人组织为手的动作、织物的褶皱、身体的记忆，以及水和土地的循环中。正如“风中交缠的意志”这一诗意的标题所暗示的，展览中一切的物质性指向亚洲离散群体游离的文化归属，也隐含着一种流动于父权与工业体系中的“女性意志”。这种意志既从历史中传承而来，根植于个体的成长记忆与精神经验，并始终与肉身生长其中的土地保持着联系。它的诗意，体现在一块逐渐褪色的布料，一次对传统形式的轻微偏离，一双留下劳动痕迹的手，或是一股被困在人工系统中不断循环的水。它裹挟着流动、边缘与不确定性，却也正是在无法被固定的状态中构成当代女性经验的真实面貌。
"Will," a metaphysical concept that has evolved continuously since Augustine, is here organised by the curator Liyuan into the gesture of the hand, the fold of fabric, the memory held in the body, and the circulation of water and earth. As the exhibition's poetic title, Twined Will in the Wind, suggests, the material presence throughout the show points toward the unsettled cultural belonging of the Asian diaspora, while also carrying within it a "women's will" that moves through patriarchal and industrial systems alike. This will is at once inherited from history, rooted in individual memories of growing up, and in lived spiritual experience, and remains, throughout, connected to the land in which the body itself has grown. Its poetry is found in a fabric slowly losing its colour, a small departure from traditional form, a pair of hands marked by labour, or a current of water endlessly circulating within an artificial system. Carrying with its movement, marginality, and uncertainty, it is precisely in this refusal to be fixed that the true face of contemporary women's experience takes shape.
Twined Will in the Wind 风中交缠的意志
8/14/2026 - 8/19/2026
Somers Gallery, 96 Chalton St, London, United Kingdom, NW1 1HJ
策展人 Curator
孙立源伦敦独立策展人，其策展视角聚焦东亚及东南亚女性与非二元性别群体中的离散经验，并致力于创造艺术、表演与影像相互交汇的空间。
Liyuan Sun is an independent curator based in London. Her curatorial focus centres on the diasporic experience of East and Southeast Asian women and non-binary communities, and she is committed to creating spaces where art, performance, and moving image converge.
笔者 Auhtor
陈玥，写作者，专题策划，她的作品常见于多家艺术媒体平台。近期，她的兴趣聚焦生态艺术、跨媒介艺术及亚欧边界的跨文化研究，现居上海。
Cynthia Chen is a writer and editorial curator whose work regularly appears across a range of art media platforms. Her current interests focus on ecological art, cross-media practice, and cross-cultural research at the borders of Asia and Europe. She is currently based in Shanghai.