 The title references the anti-trafficking or smuggling law in Canada. The title of the law suggests that it was enacted in order to protect vulnerable communities, however it was put in place to do the exact opposite of that. In 2010 the MV Sun Sea ship arrived in Vancouver, on it were 492 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. Bill C31 made it legal to jail asylum seekers that arrived to Canada through “improper channels”.  In Britain, the issue of not wanting refugees was at the forefront of the Brexit debate and the reason many people voted for it. How refugees are treated is our responsibility as people living in democracies. We are from countries that should not be denying other people.  Canada is a land that was systematically and lawfully stolen from others and now it denies other peoples the access it achieved. If the British people do not want immigrants, they should not have colonized so many other countries. The hypocrisy of both countries is galling. Our wealth and high standard of living are actively keeping others in poverty.

The Tsunami debris in the piece was found in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami.  The refugees seeking asylum were not directly related to the tsunami—Jared diamond in Collapse argues that scarcity of resources is a major contributing factor in civil wars. The debris is a reminder that refugees have gone through horrific events and require compassion. The debris is cloth, also known as second skin, it goes through what the human wearing it has gone through, it is domestic, personal and intimate.

Untitled—Anti-Smuggling Act.

The piece Roaming is a meditation on movement, travel and constrainment. 

It is a weaving within a warp weight Loom—a traditional loom used through Europe and the middle east for over a thousand years. The loom is made of drift wood and ocean pebbles, the wool is from seafaring sheep. The materials came from a wayfaring, nomadic lifestyle. They moved in slow continuous ways. This movement is mimicked in the weave structure. 

All this wandering is now caught, still silenced. The traditional hand methods are also bound. The nomadic way of life is no longer possible with borders. Borders both constrict and allow drifting. Pollution wanders freely, laws for better management are bound in place. Pollution also lives most in the places of production, the producers are hindered leaving by red tape, while the products migrate to every corner of the world, leaving those low-wage produces living in places with poisoned water and land.


Roaming—Wave Catching Warp

Our world is in chaos: global warming, a migrant crisis, epidemics, authoritarian governments, global companies with little oversight and disempowered citizens. 
Our system is broken and needs drastic change. Our current Neo-liberal democratic system is unable to fix our world’s problems. We need to adjust our societies into equilibrium with the earth and each other.

Fluevog created Ladders to Better Democracy to inspire people to know they have power to change this. They are ladders to gain height, to have higher viewing perspectives. Every ladder is based on a peaceful people’s revolution and is made from naturally sourced fibre and local patterns. The blue, white and black ladder is based on the Estonian singing revolution, where they used song to help overthrow the soviet occupying power; The grey twill ladder is based on the pirate party in Iceland that took over after the 2008 financial crisis. Every new ladder in the series will look at different situation to inspire other communities to peaceful revolutions or reforms.
Fluevog is reminding viewers that they have the power to change how their world and government function. They can tear down broken systems and create anew with beauty, harmony and community. 

Ladders for Better Democracy: Catalonia (Catalonian Upraising), Estonia (The Singing Revolution), Iceland (Wadmal for the Pirate Party)

To unravel the work, the materials must be considered. The word scarcity in handspun linen is paired with the word excess, which is sewn from Dutch Wax Print. Linen is a luxury item and hand spinning it is exceedingly laborious—largely a relic from the past. Dutch wax print is emblematic of convoluted global trade, being first created by a Dutch company as a replacement for Indonesian batiks where it never sold well. It was particularly popular in the west-indies during the 19th century, which is the height of the American Slave trade for cotton farming. Paired together, the two represent pre-industrial and post-industrial textile creation and problems that arise within them, suggesting that somewhere between the two can harmony be found.


In Between Scarcity and Excess

Borders walls are physical manifestations of exclusionary ideologies. They separate one place from another, one set of people from another, us from them, otherification. Borders are both physical and physiological. Questioning the roll of aesthetics in the ideology of borders, Fluevog uses a new aesthetic to bring a sense of home, warmth and welcome into an increasingly politicized exclusionary zone.

Border Building is a series of performance weavings of a mobile border at sites where borders have significance— Physical, national and psychological borders. For the exhibit Border Domestication the performances will take place in several locations both local and international.

The weaving is on a large frame-woven double-sided carpet with pink shag on one side and white silk with a chain link pattern with silver sequins on the other side. It has travelled widely. It has visited Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and sat near a refugee re-settlement in Germany. On the lake of the Woods that spans Canada and the USA, it has floated serenely for a week.  These places, this legacy is built into the work. The performative element, which includes interaction with viewers, is also the location and what it leaves within the piece. What essence of borders can my work pick up and how can its presence in these locations provoke change? Border’s inflexibility is what makes them effective, particularly as an ideological tool. Borders are not meant to be fluffy, pink and soft. They are meant to be bleak, to scare, shun, to be immutable and criminalize both physically and mentally. 

Through the use of welcoming domestic interior aesthetics, Fluevog aims to effect real change to borders, the laws surrounding them and the ideology of them. Fluevog firmly believes that art can soften  borders. She asks viewers to join with her and rethink what a border can and should be.


Border Building: Edge of the Pink; Border Building: Crossing Border; Border Building: The Sun Never Sets on The British Brexit

International trade practices, particularly within textiles, are placed within the framework of global warming and the negative impact these habits are creating. Slow time is used—both in the making and unravelling. It is contemplative, meditative, rhythmic time. A time that is felt in the body as a psychical. The movements are slow, local and personal. Alternate ideologies and ways of being reside enmeshed within global industry, forcing themselves to be seen, heard and contemplated. 

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