Threading Whiteness (Ongoing)
2025
Ongoing
Threading Whiteness explores the hidden inherent emotional labor required of a person of color in their friendship with a white person. Through recorded conversations, performance gestures, and meta-commentaries, this video installation unpacks the tension between grace in friendships and the inherent privilege gaps in how a person of color and a white person experience the world.
Cuts from recording:
The video below shows cut snippets from the full video piece.
In this video, my best friend and I hold a tissue paper between us. The listener threads the tissue paper with red thread as the other person talks. The needle is passed back and forth depending on who is doing the listening.
This gesture is grounded by the fragility and the domesticity of the tissue paper, in tension with the act of threading something which is both a beautifying, fixing act yet also a violent act. Much like the way hard conversations about tense topics like politics are necessary for true closeness within a friendship.
Threaded
Tissue Paper:
The threaded tissue paper is saved to be exhibited alongside the video.