The sense of touch can make information accessible beyond the visual and is fundamental to human connection. What if the bond between two people could be traced as a tactile timeline, allowing others to feel the story of a friendship with their hands?
My friendship with C. started on a video chat and remained in the virtual space for over a year. Our connection was fostered by conversations that stretched for hours, sometimes through the entire night, filled with laughter, tears, and words of mutual understanding, rooted in a common background and upbringing.
The work is framed by a ceramic vessel, mirroring the Pho we shared as our first meal together and the comfort we found in each other despite the physical distance. It holds a continuous woven cotton band, where the length of each section corresponds to the duration of a phone call, with every warp signifying one minute. The interspersed ceramic beads mark the full weeks and days that passed between our conversations. Each texture embodies a unit of time: the minutes spent talking, laughing and bonding are rendered in soft cotton thread, while the time spent apart is captured by firm ceramic material, obstacles to overcome when tracing the band with one’s hands. A woven hour stretches visually longer than a week and this intentional distortion of scale emphasizes how shared moments mattered more to our friendship than the intervals apart. The day we finally shared a long-awaited hug, our connection moved beyond the digital, beginning a new chapter that is reflected in the open-ended weaving, holding space for the story to continue.
By transforming memories into a physical form, the piece invites viewers to trace the story of our friendship with their own hands and explore the underlying data in a way that transcends sight, as something textured and real.
