A Silkworm's Dreams Weave A Rhyme

It starts from mulberry silkworm in China, to discuss faith, female labour and culture heritage. Through photography, photo montage and embroidery, to explore the transcendent connection between humans and material life under the industrialisation.

Thousands of years ago in China, our ancestors believed in the concept of animism, weaving a spiritual bond of coexistence between humans and all beings. The silkworm, as one of the softest and mysterious creatures, was regarded as a spiritual entity and was called the “divine insect.” Its cycle of transformation—metamorphosis, rebirth, and ascending into the heaven, echoed ancient Chinese views on life and samsara. Around the silkworm, a folk belief system formed. A myth of the silkworm goddess, centred on female divinity, became part of this tradition. It shaped both the spiritual life and the economic structure of ancient Chinese society.

But in today’s fast-changing world of industrialisation and modernity, this spiritual order is quickly breaking apart.  Women centred labour and handicrafts are also fading. During my fieldwork, I started to realise that these beliefs no longer exist in complete form. Instead, they hide in fragments, metaphors, and bodily memory. 

So I tried to use the silkworm as the starting point, and through photography, image montage and embroidery, to conduct an exploration on faith, female labour and material culture. I focused on how faith is reorganised and re-encoded at the image and physical levels after being suppressed, and attempted to rediscover the possible transcendent connection between humans and material life.