Assimilation

Assimilation (2022–2023) is a handmade, oversized pieces of paper created through processes of recycling and papermaking. Discarded drafts, notes, and drawings from my MAFA study were pulped, pressed, and reformed into layered, fragile 'chapters'. The density and thickness of each page vary according to the amount of pulp used, while fragments of text—letters, marks, and partial words—remain partially visible within the paper’s surface.

My practice approaches paper not only as a surface for text but as a material residue of process. During my MAFA, I became increasingly aware of how paper holds traces of administration, research, and creative labour through crinkles, fingerprints, and scuff marks. I see paper as an archive of lived interaction beyond written content. In this piece, the act of pulping and reforming documents embodies both destruction and renewal, reflecting the iterative and unstable nature of memory and research. As fragments of language re-emerged within the new pages, they carried traces of academic discourse and supervisory influence, merging into a single material entity of labour and thought. The work positions research as something that unfolds not only through written outcomes but also through the physical and transformative processes that accompany it.