Kim Ah Sam’s art practice ex across printmaking, painting, papermaking, and sculptural weavings and is means of connection with her spiritual and cultural identity.
Ah Sam’s weaving practice embodies storytelling and knowledge-sharing and is tied to the renewal and reconnection with her father’s country the Kalkadoon people. Ah Sam explores weaving as a therapeutic practice towards a process of cultural healing and a way to address feelings of disconnection and reconnection with her Country.
“Where our journey takes us”, is a series of five woven sculptures, made from repurposed twine, raffia, bamboo, and emu feathers. Imbuing new life into forgotten materials and allowing them to sing. Each sculpture is entwined with lyrical shapes and intuitive impulse. A unique weaving technique evoking at once a sensibility to traditional Aboriginal basket weaving practices while also expressing a free formed and experimental ‘searching’ as the artist journeys through each vessel with woven lines bound only by the bamboo structures beneath.
As Kim explains “My sculptures relate to the landscape in the way that it relates to the body. It’s as if the surface of the land has a type of skin, and the land has rivers just like arteries and veins of the body. My sculptural weavings flow in the same way as the rivers interlace country, or the veins run through the body allowing movement.
Image: Kim AH SAM / Where our journey takes us [detail] 2022 / weaving installation / dimensions variable / © Kim Ah Sam
