Women weave a new life

WOVEN tapestries by Karen women are on display at the Eureka Centre for the next three months.

Curator of Weaving A New Life and group organiser of Karen Tapestry Weavers, Sara Lindsay, said people who visit the exhibition will see and enjoy colour and dynamic use of pattern.

“The traditional weaving is highly patterned and used for clothing, so it was a new experience to weave tapestries as artworks for the wall,” she said.

“The tapestries break away from the neat, repetitive patterns of the cloth weaving. They evoke a sense of the freedom the Karen Tapestry Weavers have found in their new home.”

Lindsay said the Karen have a strong culture of weaving, and so she first led a tapestry workshop for Karen refugee women in 2013 at the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

“After that I regularly visited the homes of Shuklay Tahpo and Mu Naw Poe to give them guidance and encouragement to keep weaving,” Lindsay said.

“After a while Mu Naw’s mother, Cha Mai Oo, who is now 103, started weaving tapestries and then during lockdown Mu Naw’s daughter, Paw Gay Poe, commenced. Three generations from the one family.

“Both Cha Mai Oo and Mu Naw Poe had been weavers in Burma, then in the Thai refugee camps they had lived in for 20 years before coming to Australia.”

For more than a decade, Lindsay has been a mentor for the weavers.

She said she and her daughter have formed close bonds with the group and their broader families, and have been saddened by the recent death of Mu Naw Poe.

But the Eureka Centre is an appropriate place to show these works, Lindsay said, as it celebrates the diverse communities that make up life in Australia.

“The major exhibit of the Eureka Flag demonstrates the power of textiles, so the Karen tapestries sit well in the space,” she said.