Setouchi Triennale Ahead (2) Cloth Buffing Wheels and Indigo Dyeing: Finding Local Value in the Decline and Rebirth of an Industry

A team led by Chiu Ju-hua, secretary-general of the Taiwan Historical Resources Management Association, will represent Taiwan this summer at Japan's Setouchi Triennale, held once every three years. One of the team members, fiber artist Yang Wei-lin, has taken the cloth buffing wheel, a polishing tool from a gradually declining industry, and combined it with the indigo dyeing craft that has seen a revival in recent years. Through various methods of disassembly and dyeing, more than four thousand buffing wheels have been transformed into a rippling "sea of buffing wheels," in the hope that through the decline and rebirth of an industry, more people will re-examine local value.

Cloth buffing wheels are an important record of social change

Cloth buffing wheels are a polishing tool often used in many factories in Taiwan. Similar in function to sandpaper, they make tables, chairs, and industrial products smooth and rounded. Each stack of buffing wheels is sewn from a varying number of cloth pieces. Yang Wei-lin hand-disassembled nearly five thousand buffing wheels custom-ordered from a Changhua factory. The different methods of disassembly create unique fiber textures, and together with different numbers of indigo dyeing cycles and times, they produce a sea of buffing wheels with distinct layers like ripples.

Yang Wei-lin said that most dyeing involves sewing pattern threads onto cloth, dyeing it, and then removing the threads to create different textures. This time she reversed the process, using "disassembly" as the means of expression, injecting a new concept into indigo dyeing.

She revealed that the inspiration for the sea of buffing wheels continues from her earlier work "Secrets of the Intertidal Zone." Whenever the tide rises and falls, the intertidal zone is always filled with all kinds of creatures and fish eggs, and as the waves advance in layers, they form an extraordinarily lively scene. The gradients of the buffing wheels and indigo dyeing precisely reflect the ever-changing ocean.