Cha-no-ma garden
Earlier this year, I had a chat with the gardener here at the Abbotsford Convent. One story from that day particularly inspired me and catalyzed many ideas: the nuns who lived here at the Convent planted a large garden full of secret herbs, which were used for making remedies, teas, and chartreuse. 

A cup of tea means a lot in the world. In Japan, Cha no ma（茶の間）is a ‘living room’, it literally means ‘a space for a cup of tea’. This is the centre of family life, however it is also a shared space for both social and personal use. Cha solves everything, physical conditions as well as relationships. My grandparents had a big cha no ma and a garden where they grew many flowers and herbs; this is one of my favourite childhood memories. 

This installation brings together disparate fragments of time and space: the historical layers of the Convent, personal memories of the cha-no-ma, and the living ecosystem of my garden. Through the meditative daily rituals of weaving and knotting, these threads coalesce.

Within my practice, plants act as a vital force, anchoring the work to the concept of impermanence. This is grounded in rhizomatic theory—an understanding of existence with no definitive beginning or end, always moving through the in-between. At C3 gallery, I seek to pause a multi-layered moment where site-specific history, personal memory, and cultural lineage collide.

The work forms part of a continuous inquiry into zero-waste philosophies within process-based art, mirroring the sustainable, community-driven frameworks I develop with the Slow Art Collective.