Dey is a series of textile paintings that draws from my mother sewing, stitching, and mending clothes during our family’s time at the Khao I Dang refugee camp. The title, which means “to sew” or “to stitch” in Khmer, reflects both the physical act and the emotional labour it carries. Her quiet labour forms a starting point for these works, which explore themes of repair, resilience, and remembrance.

Each piece is made from fragments: scraps of old paintings, plant-dyed cloth, rice sacks, and discarded Khmer silks. Stitched into patchworks that resemble the Cambodian landscape when seen from above, the surfaces become a kind of map. The seams, uneven edges, and exposed threads are intentional, tactile marks that speak to domesticity, labour, and the act of mending what has been fractured.

The rice sacks evoke survival and endurance; the dyed cloth and silks reference inherited traditions and intergenerational work. Stitching, here, is both material and metaphor, a way of holding together what feels broken or incomplete, creating space for multiple histories to coexist: ritual and repair, memory and tenderness.

The paintings are hung as a reference to the tradition of Cambodian hanging cloths, evoking both domestic and ceremonial spaces of care.