Figure 1. Patricia Ki, Leak everywhere, 2021, collage and embroidery on a crumpled presentation script on hysteria, from art prompts by Tammy Reynolds and Margeaux Feldman, approx. 254 × 304mm.
 

wandering womb, menstrual blood flooding the brain, wind, earth, sea, growth, raging fire underneath, self-destructive rage, ever-burning candle-lights in mourning, for the lives and deaths and unheard voices of those before us, vigilant reptilian eyes, survival instincts, circle of life, circle of relations, phoenix rising, always coming back, always coming home, to the shadows, to the body, to bloodlines

it’s a chaotic leaking, it’s a strategic leaking
a happenstance, a mess, while threading/treading carefully
It is an art

for if we destroy the ground, we destroy ourselves
let’s not forget how we benefit, how we are sustained by
this grounding
for nothing exists outside of discursive intelligibility
there’s always a limit to our everywhere, but

finding gaps, tracing cracks in the wall, seeping through
the walls immersed in our stories
the white walls stained by our lives

mycelium running
the bloodlines
tilling, tilling, tilling
we turn over the world

Rivers of stars

two pieces of paper, letter-sized and crumpling into  
a web of creased lines and warped boxes and twists and turns
words into worms

of note:

Figure 2. Patricia Ki, Rivers of stars, 2021–2023, embroidery and mixed media on pages of Bloom’s Taxonomy instructional printouts, close-up.

“Bloom’s Taxonomy”
“Cognitive objectives”
“intellectual skills”
“Separates whole in its parts, until”
“Knowledge.”
“Give examples”
“Explain”
“Recall”
“Explain”
“Explain”
“Explain”

Benjamin Bloom and colleagues, architects of hierarchical models for the classification of educational objectives ⁠— do you really want to know what I know?

ivory thread gripping the creases
from stitch interlocking stitch, needle point linking needle point, emerge  

                                        a strange being
                                                five limbs and generating
                                                   thirty-three claws and sprouting
             interconnected ribs sprawling
                          all held by an endless spine, of
                       songs
                               cries
                     phone calls
                love notes
              rage poems
knitted socks
      lost emails
           held hands
            warnings
       yearnings
                                  ever hoping
                       in grief

Benjamin Bloom and colleagues, do you care to know what we know?
what lines cannot straighten, what warped boxes cannot keep? what hierarchies cannot measure, what prescriptive words cannot explain? what bullet points cannot divide, what letter-size pages cannot rule?

bone tethering bone tethering bone tethering bone tethering bone

worming
            through

          pebble
       by
          pebble

    shifting
     sands

shaping
        paths