Shaya Ishaq

ELEGY FOR A MATRIARCH WHOSE SPIRIT PULSES THROUGH SOIL AND RISES WITH THE SUN, ETERNALLY

Materials: Cotton yarn, soil, wood, milk paint
Dimensions: 4.5 ft x 4ft
Year: 2022

In my weaving practice, I have been curious about the natural interplay between text and textile; how language can inform form and vice versa. In this woven series, I explore the poetic form known as an elegy. An elegy is a poem written in couplets that laments those we’ve lost, it is a song of mourning. Elegy for a Matriarch is an exploration of grief, growth, and temporality in the wake of loss. 

Sun and soil are generative life forces that make themselves present in this installation through the use of light and earth. My intention is to create a space with a seemingly eternal sunset glow to bask in as a calming invitation to ceremony. The curves moving in between the double weave layers form their own rhythmic pattern that reach beyond the limits of the warp.

This abstract and sculptural series of weavings represents an alternate burial in the memory of my late grandmother who was also a weaver.  In some ways the work is about lineage and how we carry on  the legacy of those who came before us. The early days of the pandemic altered how we could realistically gather and mourn in community. This work was created in memory of someone dear to me yet the practice of mourning is embedded in our human condition. Elegy for  Matriarch is an invitation to take a moment to pause and bask in the memory of our loved ones who live through us. To reflect upon our interconnected relationship to death, impermanence, resilient growth in spite of great loss.

______

We give our dead

To the orchards

And the groves.

We give our dead

To life.

Death

Is a great Change—

Is life’s greatest Change.

We honor our beloved dead.

As we mix their essence with the earth,

We remember them,

And within us,

They live.

- Octavia E. Butler