Seabird Habitatscape #1 - Bunda Lagoon and Mother Mountain (2024) is the first of Oh’s new site-specific series, Seabird Habitatscape (2024-Present). For this new series, Oh critically disrupts the colonial vernacular of western cartography, conceptually remapping the islands of the Pacific by tracing the extraction of resources that brought migrant laborers from all over the world to the region. By following phosphate mining, pearl diving, immigration detention centers, and military bases as a historical lens, Oh’s research traces the shifting control of German, British, and Antipodean imperialisms that brought waves of migrants from China, Malaysia, and India laboring under western powers, as well as Korean and Japanese laborers during Japan’s military occupation of the region during World War II. Many descendants are still based in Oceania, forming an extensive diasporic community that is rendered invisible by national histories.


Enticingly beautiful, the intricacy of Oh’s dreamy textile installation immediately pulls viewers in to take a closer look at the artist’s labor-intensive approach—both in craft and research. Juxtaposed with a faded projection of an archival British map of the Pacific from 1798, the artist’s interconnected blue textiles offer atmospheric views of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s tropical landscapes, cyanotyped using filmic transparencies collaged from archival images and Oh’s photography. Oh combined cyanotype and hogushigasuri (warp printing ikat) to slowly bring the landscapes into view using a tactile, meticulous process that took the artist months to complete. For the hogushigasuri technique, the artist loosely weaves the textile in order to print the image onto it, before unraveling it completely and starting the weaving process over. The alternating layers of loom weaving pull the unprinted threads forward to mingle with the cyanotyped threads, creating an atmospheric effect that gives the landscape a depth similar to what is found in painting and photography. Oh manipulates warp threads during the weaving process to introduce variable textures, spaces, and gaps, bringing attention to the distinct variations textile carries as a sculptural form. Over the course of making the work, the artist applied the cyanotype emulsion and exposure process four times, the layers of which can be observed at the edges of each panel, ebbing like the tides of the ocean or silhouette of mountains. Through this cyanotyping process, the image progressively comes into sharper focus, just like the recollection of a memory.


Installed for the first time in the gallery space, Seabird Habitatscape #1 is held in tension even as it softly sways. The original linen warp threads activate the piece from floor to ceiling, extending the viewer’s gaze to anchoring points and subtle shadows that serve to narrate a new understanding of history.



Image caption:
193-?, One of Nauru's beauty spots - a corner of the Buada Lagoon, National Library of Australia,
nla.obj-143784867
Approximately 1916, Mother Mountain, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, National Library of
Australia, nla.obj-152966813

Map
Chart of the Pacific Ocean, 1798, by Aaron Arrowsmith, The Collection of the State Library of NSW