Yibing Chen

Yibing Chen is an interdisciplinary textile artist. An observer, storyteller, filmmaker and spinner. Her work crosses textiles, sculpture, moving image and performance.

Her work the ‘Domestic Spinner’ explores the connections between spinning and women's identities, their bodies and activities of domestic life. Researching the history of hand spinning Yibing made a series of her own ‘spinning tools’. Building them from everyday household objects such as wooden spoons and mixing bowls. Through her research Yibing noticed connections between the tool and how it interacted with the spinners body, rolling against the leg or dropping from the spinners hand. Yibing developed a body of work focusing on a woman’s body spinning with these ‘household’ tools.

DOMESTIC SPINNER

The inspiration came from a family story of Yibing's great-grandmother, who was a domestic spinner. The family grew cotton, and her great-grandfather made the spinning wheel.

Yibing demonstrated an approach to her work that blends a playful feel with a serious subject – the domestic labour, at times in history forced, to spin and make yarn, thread, and a spun line.

For women, spinning could be picked up and put down as needed, and it was relatively easy to do the side of other activities such as attending to children or nursing a baby - “A Note on the Division of Labor by Sex", Judith K. Brown.

If one is responsible for a wide variety of tasks, such as food preparation, child care, and housework, having tasks that are easily stopped and started again at the same place helped lead to the production of a finished item that could be used for practical purposes - Elizabeth Barber.