Where Do You Sit, If Not on Soil Ground
Asmaa Amadou
Rhode Island School of Design
Where do you sit, if not on soil ground, began with my understanding of ground as a living body, a place where human and material histories intersect, interact, transform, and remain. I was born and raised Lomé, Togo until I was thirteen when I moved to New York City with my family. In My thesis work, I was investigating the land and cultural history, and the memory of traveling from the coastal city of Lomé to our northern village Cinkassé every summer when I was little. To me, ground is an animate presence that intersects nature, vegetation, memory, labor, and everyday life. Through this installation, textile becomes another kind of ground: something that can hold, reveal, and communicate layered histories through the use of repetition. I was interested in exploring my ideas around ground throught the merging figurative and abstraction, blending weaving, photo, microscopic studies, field studies, watercolor paintings, clay, glass, glass beads, wood, metal, indigo, soil, and salt.