Sally Boon Matthews

Sally Boon Matthews

  • paper/thread
    • when you look closer nothing goes away: it changes see...live performance for book instruments, sweeping brooms and voice...these books can be played as musical instruments for their sound, and also be improvised as a musical score.
    • body gone.... i won't die, i won't go anywhere, i'll be here..... but don't ask me anything... i won't answer....zen response to dying.
    • there's holes in this world... deconstructing personal and historical narratives as a way to embrace chaos as a healthy state ....mixed media...in progress
    • letters 1–10 ...is a video and soft sculpture installation responding to Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. The work translates Rilke’s poetics into tactile and time-based forms, creating spaces of reflection and care.
    • it's my hole... i control what comes in and what comes out...response to Roe V Wade overturned 2022
    • imprint ...zen vows, since time without beginning, rising out of greed, hatred, and jealousy, through body, speech and mind...
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soft sculpture #2 Studio view
2024
soft sculpture...embroidery thread, gel pen on mulberry paper
29"x 59"x20"

Letters 1–10 is a video and soft sculpture installation responding to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Each short film is paired with a hand-stitched "comforter/cushion" embroidered with faces, gestures, and text fragments. The work translates Rilke’s poetics into tactile and time-based forms, creating spaces of reflection and care.

Rather than offering advice, Rilke invites us to stay present with uncertainty. Discomfort, for him, is not something to overcome but a vital part of becoming. These works hold that tension—where softness and existential unease coexist—and ask what it means to remain open to the unresolved.