11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Kim Ah Sam in her Brisbane studio 2024 NOTE 1 Kim Ah Sam, in conversation with the author, April 2024. KALKADOON/KUKUYALANJI BORN 1967, MEANJIN/MAGANDJIN / BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA LIVES+WORKS INTULMUR/IPSWICH, AUSTRALIA To speak of weaving, one must first speak of handiwork and the faculty of touch. Weaving can neither be performed without the hands nor arranged by someone else’s fingers. Hands are a useful, if obvious, framing device for the art of weaving. Take the practice of Kalkadoon/Kuku Yalanji artist Kim Ah Sam, who for the Asia Pacific Triennial has produced a suite of ten woven mobiles that draw upon weaving as a site of abstraction. Rather than conform to rote making procedures or the surety of guaranteed outcomes, Ah Sam’s weaving is led entirely by intuition. She doesn’t start with a preconceived idea of how a work should look, and can jump between multiple weavings at once, stopping and starting as impulse guides her. ‘I just go with the flow’, Ah Sam says. The artist’s approach reveals something about the seemingly inexplicable nature of her works. Around a central conic structure (made from bamboo), Ah Sam weaves strands of raffia and twine in many different directions, in many different colours, guided by many different visual associations and interpretations. She invokes both traditional and contemporary weaving techniques with unpredictable intrigue. As the structures become engulfed by raffia and twine, Ah Sam’s woven mobiles assume eye-catching forms that are singular in the sense they are unable to be re-created or reverse-engineered. Ah Sam states that the conic shape of her weavings recalls termite mounds found on Kalkadoon Country (Mount Isa region, Queensland). This explains their irregular and imperfect forms which tower, lean, bulge and recess. The detail woven into and around their conic structure recalls other topographical features of Kalkadoon Country — the undulating plains and rolling hills, the jagged creeks and dotted rock wells. Ah Sam fringes the base of each work with a buoyant plume of emu feathers, recalling the traditional emu footprint boundary markings of Battle Mountain, which today is a massacre site that holds the painful memories of the Kalkadoon Wars (1870–90). In 2016, Ah Sam returned to her paternal Kalkadoon Country to begin her journey of reconnection. This visit had a profound effect on her and underpins her weaving practice. ‘I wasn’t born on Country,’ she states, ‘but I know where I’m from . . . and weaving takes me back there, to that sense of belonging.’ 1 Through weaving, which is primarily a communal activity, Ah Sam’s sense of journey and reconnection transcends the mere activity of her hands to become an exercise of the spirit. Journey and reconnection, like raffia and twine, are not simply material or spatial configurations but are conceptual and speculative tethers woven into Ah Sam’s work. To journey and reconnect is to braid, twist, loop, knot and fray in different directions. When going off the beaten track, so to speak, one can never be sure where you’re going or what must be traversed to get there. Ah Sam starts from this juncture and follows her intuition: she might not know where Country will take her, or what she will encounter along the way, but is certain it guides her weaving, and will always lead her home. ADAMFORD KIMAHSAM ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 44 — 45