Ensuing/sewing Worlds, Piercing the Global Veil

by The O Home

Colonial expeditions spanning over half a millennium have transformed women’s bodies to conform to the demands of established economies. The results of these circumnavigations would later also reduce the world to a globe and initiate its process of racial domination through empire, multinational companies, and the wielders of knowledge in modernity. The foundations for exchanging value and its choices of currency lie in the making of these globalising processes of trade, slavery, and war—eventually morphing through the technical veil of a computerized financial system. 

Meanwhile, the nature of value, and the value of nature thereof, has been usurped by a capitalistic global cosmology. The use value of things, from communal farms to the household, has all fallen into abstraction and numbers. 

In the wake of storming ourselves alongside the daily grind of family chores and rent, we draw on an ensuing understanding of debt, particularly among women in the global south, that is rooted in bodily experience and not centered on mere resilience. Through the rapid research conducted by members of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and subsequent workshops, we were able to map out, in collaboration with fellow collaborators at The O Home, the gendered effects of debt, from the visceral to the planetary. Rapid research reveals the realities of debt for women in six focused countries in Asia—Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia—with a synthesis of calls from feminist movements to move forward from the current shackles. 

The O Home conducted a series of workshops with local communities, collaborating with artists and activists. One of these workshops incorporated a weaving circle, where women’s plights were shared, and participants identified specific issues, whether they were political, cultural, economic, or environmental. The discussion loomed over the participants as they learned basic techniques of macrame to create a procedural understanding of debt, from environmental to everyday life. Another workshop delved into zine-making through an inquiry into rapid research, exploring the root of terms like ‘currency’ and cutting out paper prints of the research presentation to correspond with their personal experiences of debt as youths, mothers, and cultural workers. Both workshops offer a more tactile insight that is far removed from the binaries and cables of global capital. Instead of the computerized system, which had its vestige of being developed for global militarism, we engaged in a detour of this craft (as looms evolved into computers) to counter the impersonal hardware of financescape with a more gestural act of grasping: piercing the global veil,  the web of currencies to mean running a circle to discuss current issues that in the manner of creative resistance.

The mural carries a collective ethos of co-producing together with communities, fellow artists, and (m)others. It combines material to spindle forms as variegated as the monumental amount of labor exhausted in care work. Synching quilts, textiles, painting, and fashion, the mural highlights calls on women and development on the theme of debt justice. The work is accompanied by installation pieces that explore channels, portals of creation, and vessels for healing and defense—how the Earth herself had been allowed to be carved for greed and the repayment of illegitimate debt. The depth of these perturbations, which cut through the wealth of our lands, our energies, our knowledge, and our time, is depicted in the map of the Global South and juxtaposed with symbols of abundance. This map illustrates the land and sea as a boat with two women being carried, or them holding it, on each side. The boat tells the shared history and struggle of women navigating the currents of the sea and its depths, where colonialism has been concealed through multiple layers of finance. Thus, the two women highlight a counter-image to conquest and colonial expedition; instead, it foregrounds an image of women as active warriors, navigators, and workers fighting to sustain life. They carry with them a net made of loom threads to emphasize the carrying of burdens, bearing a meshwork where one can see through a fabric of space and visibility rather than the opaque conditionalities of financial institutions. 

Tethered on each bottom end of the mural, a traje de boda or baro’t saya dress is to be worn by both mother artists of The O Home for the activation of the mural during the conference. The traditional dress serves as a living metaphor for being tied to unequal systems, which fosters the very distinction between the Global South and North. A bind that must be cut. Stretching across the mural are a myriad of pockets, a container of stories with curated objects, such as zines, letters, and other items that the audience can examine. Casting its presence as a living, evolving, and ongoing piece, the work aims to break down the division between art and activism, seeking to incite collective authorship through direct writing, sewing, and painting in a designated section. This fosters greater accessibility of spectatorship through the very act of collective witnessing, allowing us to care, mourn, and engage in forms of collectivity.

The mural carried by the APWLD calls for the immediate cancellation of exorbitant debts and rallies for debt-free support for what is due. From austerity measures and structural conditionalities, we must move forward and imagine worlds that rechannel public funds toward universal social protection and ecological care. 

In a time when the most significant forces of foreign aid are being pulled out and many populations are further pushed to the margins, we emphasize the urgency of their many calls to uplift women and the planet. In a time when we are witnessing the most documented genocides in regions of Palestine, Congo, and other militarized zones, we demand reparations from states and the military-industrial axis that amassed wealth through the hoarding and ethnic cleansing of territories. 

Despite the recent financial meltdowns, we strive for abundance, fighting to protect what remains for the sake of future generations. The new debt sustainability analysis proposed focuses on human rights, climate, sustainable development, and gendered needs, including ex-post and ex-ante gender, labor, and environmental impact assessments and audits—a significant shift. Instead of these calls, The O Home casts a net to reach into this future. We summon the currencies of the land, the ancestors guiding us to its revival, the core of the Earth, the sky, and the dreams of feminist world-building, knotted there, closely moving, arriving.

The O Home

Philippines

The O Home is a mother-child space developed through the synergistic collaboration of founders Yllang Montenegro and Len-Len, launched in August 2023. Their works draw on personal experiences of grief, migration, women’s empowerment, and the challenges faced by becoming a mother artist in the Philippines.

Know more about them and their work.