With Now Holds Always

2024

thread, glue, dried ginger root, orange peels, dried plum, pine needles, bamboo leaves, dried kelp, turkey vertebrae, candies

​

Among a range of offering foods referenced in With Now Holds Always are pine, bamboo, and plum—a motif that has been employed to symbolize 

resilience across centuries of Japanese ceramics, lacquerware, textiles, and other artforms. 

 

[excerpted from Ravelling Seams, Massy Arts Society exhibition text by Faune Ybarra] Sena Cleave’s woven netting sculptures put into tension sonaemono (offerings) exchanged between diasporic Japanese communities. Dried kelp, apple seeds, orange peels and rice are woven using butcher’s and poly rope — strings commonly used to tie food and level brick assemblies in a construction. In this fashion, Cleave offers their ancestors a home, a home where the thread and gifts hold each other in place while leaving space for the in-betweenness spanned from this bonding gesture.

​

Creative Access Description

Four photos of a pale pink handwoven artwork hanging on a white wall. It is 25 inches wide and 58 inches tall. The artwork is made of loosely woven threads resembling a net. A nail on each top corner holds its weight, causing the artwork to droop downward in the middle. ​Thread ends are tied into knots lining the top and bottom edges.

 

​At three inch intervals, a line of pine needles is woven into the threads, forming vertical stripes down the length of the artwork. Scattered across the artwork are various dried foods, woven between and attached to the threads. These include a turkey vertebra, the tops of orange peels cut into circles, translucent white candies, shrivelled ginger roots, and bamboo leaves knotted or rolled into spirals.