Crafting Desire: Queering the Red Sleep Bed
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Szu-Ying (Rising) Lai
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Social values are materialised by craft, becoming part of the material culture. Individuals inherit ideology by using the objects. ‘Crafting Desire: Queering the Red Sleep Bed’ is a project that explores how an artefact carries on group consciousness arranged in the domestic environment. Narrating from a queer perspective, I reveal the untold, oppressive stories of the Red Sleep Bed. Through critical making, I transform this artefact from assisting patriarchy to embracing gender diversity.
Red Sleep Bed (紅眠床) is traditional Taiwanese bed furniture. As a dowry, the craft of the Red Sleep Bed documents the ideal projection of marriage from family and society – gender role, patriarchy, fertility, heterosexuality. As a bed, the design of the Red Sleep Bed entangled with Taiwanese languages, customs, and religions, affording a standard way of living.