Upcycling is part of our consciousness of, and attempts at healing, the damage we're doing to the planet and ourselves. I worked on Lee Mingwei's Mending Project last year at the Liverpool biennial, and he's featured here with Karen Margolis because they both work with themes of damage and mending. When Mingwei lost a close friend in the 9/11 tragedy his response was to take clothes from his closet that needed repair and started to mend. It was a cathartic experience for him and the first seed of an idea for the project. Karen's work explores internal mechanisms as well as damage/mending through intimate expressions of how we are touched by circumstances of life. Margolis will be exhibiting at the Rockland Center for the Arts, NY in 2012. If you're in New York at the end of this month Mingwei will be doing a public presentation at the Museum of Chinese in America.
Karen Margolis
Visitors to the Mending Project brought items that had been damaged, menders repaired the tear in a visible way using threads from spools on the wall. The threads remained attached and over time created a delicate web between the mended items and the spools. During the process, conversations between the menders and the mendees revealed intimate and touching aspects of the lives of both.
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