Completion: April 2026
I was selected as one of seven artists for the Calgary Arts Development Art Bus Project.
My work, In Passing, explores public transit as a shared social space, using horses, thread, and flowing route lines to reflect collective movement and fleeting moments of connection. Blending digital design and embroidery, the work highlights the invisible connections that shape how we move through the city together.
Detail of the Fibre Work on the Bus
The Craft Process
The body of work began as a series of hand-embroidered fibre artworks. I built three custom wooden frames, stretched the fabric, and embroidered every element by hand from scratch. The completed panels were then assembled, digitized, and prepared for large-scale production and installation.
The Exhibition
The final handcrafted artwork was exhibited at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery as part of my graduate exhibition in May 2026.
Artwork Statement
In Passing explores public transit as a shared social space—one where people move together, cross paths, and slowly drift apart.
The imagery is centered around horses, a symbol of movement and collective rhythm. They reference earlier forms of transportation, while also connecting to the artist’s Chinese identity. On one side of the bus, a quiet night scene unfolds, where the horses move together with the mountains, suggesting moments of connection and shared experience. On the other side, their paths begin to separate, reflecting how individuals diverge over time despite briefly traveling alongside one another.
Thread-like lines run through the composition, mapping abstract routes across the surface of the bus. These lines echo transit systems, but also suggest invisible connections between people, places, and time. The mountainous forms in the background are soft and continuous, grounding the work in a sense of place while reinforcing the idea of ongoing movement.
This project is created through fibre-based processes, including stitching and embroidery. Instead of purely digital methods, the work emphasizes handcraft, material texture, and labor. The tactile quality of the fabric introduces a slower, more human pace into a fast-moving urban environment, allowing the surface of the bus to carry both image and process.
As the bus moves through the city, the artwork shifts from a static object to something experienced in passing—fragmented, layered, and constantly changing depending on the viewer’s position. In this way, the work reflects the transient nature of public life: brief encounters, shared spaces, and the quiet connections that happen in between.
