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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.
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Szu-Ying (Rising) Lai -
Crafting Desire: Queering the Red Sleep Bed -
2024
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.
Szu-Ying (Rising) Lai -
Crafting Desire: Queering the Red Sleep Bed -
2024
I returned to my home country of Taiwan to visit with the traditional woodcraft masters, asking them for their advice. They taught me the elementary techniques, which tools to use, and how to design decorations out of Taiwanese/Han Chinese symbols.
Story Of Me And The Red Sleep Bed
Who am I? As an intro, the video gradually uncovers the narrator faced from traditional Taiwanese family values, linking to the inequality in the social scale. And try to find a way to break through and get justice.
What Bed Am I ?
The montage of movie clips, personal footage, and archive videos regarding the bed. The bed is the start of life, a place for dreaming and nightmare, as well as the end. What identity is the bed? What bed am I?