In the exhibition Leftovers, artist Lieu Le presents a textile installation created through natural dyeing and the reuse of discarded materials. Le works in a material-based practice, focusing on how textiles transform in response to the body’s movement and the passage of time.
Through techniques such as hand weaving, natural dyeing, and shibori, learned in Japan. Le explores how surplus from nature, daily life, and local production can be renewed. Using deadstock yarns and fabrics from factories, alongside gathered remnants such as withered flowers, onion skins, avocado pits, and wild plants, she gives form to a new material language. The textiles are shaped through time-consuming and meditative methods:
Le unravels old yarns, knots them thread by thread, and weaves by hand. In her shibori works, she works with folds (sekka-shibori), compression and clamping (itajime-shibori), or stitching (nui-shibori), creating repetitive lines that are then gathered, dyed, and steamed.
These slow and tactile gestures give the fabric pattern, texture, and elasticity, allowing it to hold memory, time, and transformation. The exhibition comes to life through performance, where the textiles meet the artist’s body in movement, creating a dialogue between material and movement.
Supported by Kulturetaten.
Photographer: Kevin Fauske / Fotostallen AS