Repair

diary pages, zippers, cotton salwar cloth, thread

Process:

At first, I wanted to use zippers to attach many different things together and represent healing, but after my mom gave me one of her old salwars, I decided to make a salwar out of diary pages and parts of her old salwar.

I planned out my idea and attempted attaching the zipper to diary pages. It surprisingly worked well and I began crafting the whole piece.

Written Statement:

For this piece, I chose to repair my past brokenness which I expressed through my diary in middle school, specifically referring to how I was able to heal by writing. In middle school, I had some struggles in my social life as I was new to public school and experienced loss (both my maternal great grandfathers passed away within 6 months of each other in 8th grade). Writing was not only a way to help me process what was happening, but also enabled me to move on and clear my head. 

I focused on healing. I define healing as learning from experiences, fixing the underlying problems, and being able to look back at what happened; it is the 'sturdiest' form of repair. Not only did the diary help me heal when I was in middle school, but reading through it for the project was also a healing process.

I utilized the pages from my old diary to reference what I was healing. The white cloth is from my Mom's old salwar. In my culture, white is worn during funerals and the mourning period after. This refers not only to mourning and grieving over these bad experiences but also connects to my great-grandparents. The zippers refer to healing as they are sturdy but you can open them up to see what was repaired. The salwar shapes of the entries refer to where the white cloth came from and how I am using these experiences to make something better and stronger.