By Hand with Lin Qiqing

BY MORGAN BECKER

Lin Qiqing took up weaving as a hobby, while she was in New York for a spell on assignment. Born in Guangdong, she started her career as a journalist based in Shanghai—covering China’s online landscape, telling “other people’s stories.”

The six weeks she spent there turned out to be fateful. An open studio course on the Upper East Side led to all sorts of workshops—indigo dye, print design—and eventually, a Parsons degree in textile. Qiqing put down roots in Brooklyn, trading the fastidious work of investigative journalism for that of a full-time artist.

It’s not as much of a departure as you might expect; Qiqing has always been a storyteller, through and through. Working visually simply opened the door to a broader audience. “Emotions like anger, frustration; sweet moments, intimacy, power. These are things that cross cultures,” the artist tells Beyond Noise. At their most recognizable, Qiqing’s tapestries (hand-dyed and spun from organic paper, true to age-old tradition) display abstract human forms, tackling themes of gender, migration, and language—relishing, always, in nuance.

Morgan Becker: Originally, you studied journalism. Do you see a connection between that type of storytelling and the narrative tapestries you create today?

Lin Qiqing: For sure, there’s a continuation. People [who] work in textile—maybe they’re more into the abstract. Artists in general might be more into the composition of colors and shapes. I’m more interested in ‘human’ stories. I try to sketch and draw figures and think of their interactions.

Journalism [is] different from making art because it’s about other people’s stories. If I’m interested in some topic, I can pitch it to my editor, but it’s not always that you can [write] what you want to. It depends on what the publication thinks and whether people are interested in it. This freedom of deciding what I want to make—that’s the good part of being an artist.

MB: Are certain themes easier to tackle with that sort of abstraction, versus the directness of writing?

LQ: With visuals, it’s a more universal language. I feel like my work is about people’s stories. Emotions like anger, frustration; sweet moments, intimacy, power. These are things that cross cultures. Also as [an immigrant], even though I can use English to work, I’m not sure if I can describe the most subtle emotions in a second language. For me, working visually gives me the opportunity to say what I want to say.

MB: How’d you learn to weave?

LQ: I took my first class at Loop of the Loom, a Japanese weaving studio in New York City. That was in 2018. I was still working in journalism at the time; the company flew me to New York for a month and a half to do some investigative reporting. I barely knew anyone in the city, so [I was] just looking for something to do on the weekend. A programmer posted a tweet saying that he recently started learning to weave, and it was very interesting because programming and weaving are all about building intricate blocks—they’re very similar.

The good thing about New York is that there’s always something! I Googled classes available in the city. It was very simple just to shout [when we needed help]; very freeform, all the materials and colors that you like. Afterward, I went back to Shanghai. I was looking for all kinds of textile-related workshops—basket weaving, indigo dye, print design. At first, it was more like a hobby. I was trying it out to see if there was some potential there, if I could do something more serious. I gradually confirmed that I like it. And I’m so lucky, too, to have some talent for it. Eventually, I decided to do a degree and applied for Parsons’s MFA Textile program, which I graduated from last year.

MB: It’s interesting, you mentioned the similarities between weaving and programming. But you do a lot of things in a really analog way, making your own paper and mixing your own colors. What does that physical labor add to your work?

LQ: The physical labor part is necessary. Paper is an important material in my weaving; there are ‘some’ industrially-produced paper yarns on the market, but there aren’t so many options. It’s not like wool or cotton, where you can find all kinds of shapes and colors and manufacturers available.

Natural dyeing is a choice because of the aesthetics. In general, I prefer muted colors over the very bright ones. It’s a lot more work and sometimes the colors won’t turn out exactly how you planned. Some textile artists will say, ‘Okay, I’m not doing it,’ because they want to have control over the precise colors of the yarn. And I totally understand that. But so far, I’m okay with the occasional surprise. And I do think colors extracted from nature are so beautiful, so it’s worth the work.

MB: Most people don’t work with paper in their weaving, right? How did you come to that method?

LQ: When I was still in school, I tried so many different materials. Paper was [just] one of them. I was trying to achieve some structure in a weaving—because they’re usually flat, right? I was trying to do some three-dimensional thing. And I tried wood, metal wire, all kinds of different materials to try to strengthen it. And when it came to paper, it actually worked really well.

Paper-making is another delicate craft with a rich history. I always like knowing the character of the material I’m using. And there are so many different kinds of paper—mulberry, cotton, abaca. Within the material, there’s a lot of texture and color to choose from.

MB: Tell me more about how you engage with those histories—with paper-making and weaving, which really are both age-old practices. Do they materially influence your work today?

LQ: I definitely like reading about the histories of crafts or materials. It’s [informative of] what our ancestors did in the past—how they used those materials, and what kind of amazing artwork they made. After I have that knowledge, I can say what I want to make now. It’s like carrying the wisdom of the ancestors. I have that very big picture in the back of my head.

Even though China has a very long and rich history of textile arts and weaving, I never saw anyone weave where I grew up. It’s totally disconnected from the tradition. My grandparents’ generation, they were all farmers. Everything changed in the ’80s and ’90s after the reform and opening-up of China, so I don’t see any farmers anymore. I don’t see rice fields anymore. Compared to my friends in the program who are from India, they still have a ‘living’ tradition of so many weavers and craftspeople. They’re very connected on a daily basis. That’s not the case for me. It actually makes me more interested in knowing the traditions in China—starting to look for these places that still have traditional weaving going on, usually [among] ethnic minority groups. I’m planning to visit these places next time I go home. Weaving kind of gave me the access point to connect to my country’s traditions again.

MB: If you could hang one of your works in any home or institution, at any scale, where would you place it?

LQ: I’d love to hang my work in a subway station. I did an internship, almost for a year, in Bushwick. I’d take the C train and transfer to the L, and the transfer’s stop is Broadway Junction Station. They have these beautiful stained-glass windows. Coming from underground, taking the elevator to go up to the ground floor… It’s a really nice moment. We could give the busy commuters a second of comfort.