ABOUT
Their work is concerned with maritime trade, looking at the close links between labour, migration and tracing matrilineal and genderqueer narratives through ecological histories and water cosmologies.
They work with natural materials such as soil, water, wind and their related processes to reflect on non-linear thinking and simultaneous temporalities.
They prioritise modes of exchange in their work, using sculpture, sound, performance and participatory practice to investigate notions of community, informed by cross-cultural ties as well as transnational movements.
Alaya’s work have recently been shown at Edinburgh Arts Festival, the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and Mimosa House, London. They completed a 2-year residency with Talbot Rice Gallery at the Edinburgh College of Art from 2022-2024 and BA(Fine Arts) at the Glasgow School of Art in 2016.
Alaya is currenty working on a long-term project, ‘The Sea, The Rope, the Heat, and The Fingers Pulling the Thread’ - an episodic project that spans across sculpture, sound, performance, writing and community involvement.
Episode 1: Unravelled Gathering
Unravelled Gathering (The Rope) was shown at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh and Mimosa House, London in early 2024. The work considered maritime knowledge systems that are grounded by weights and measures, such as the deep-sea practice of using rope divided into fathoms to measure the depth of water. Looking at rope as a signifier and representation of complex histories of empire and labour, this work also gestures to the Samsui women. These were impoverished Chinese immigrants seeking employment in the British colonies between the 1920s and 1940s and ended up working in construction industries.
Episode 2: The Fingers Pulling the Thread
A textile and sound work for the Edinburgh Arts Festival in August 2024. This work references a dyeing technique from Guangdong, gambiered silk, using mud and ju-liang, a medicinal root to impart a distinct brown to the fabric. This specific mud-dyeing technique of the gambiered silk uses iron-rich mud from the Pearl River Delta. The work uses textiles and traditional dyeing technique to speak of the history of migration and the intertwined layers of industry, environmental changes and degradation.
Episode 3: Sounding the Depths (Work in Progress)
An exploration on ‘Sounding’, looking at marine / coastal winds, breath, rhythm, silence and resonance.
Curation:
Confluence is a research and residency programme, I initiated with Qanat, LE18 (Morocco) and Shayma Nader (Palestine). Premised on collaborative processes of site-situated knowledge and learning about the cultural, spiritual and geopolitical dimensions of specific bodies of water.
please get in touch:
alayaang1@gmail.com
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