Toni Zhao: Ragged Affection

In this presentation, Toni continues her exploration of everyday objects, laborious traces, and marginal perspectives, presenting textile, sculptural, and installation works made from diverse soft materials and handcraft techniques. She employs plastic strings, cut towels, flour clay, and ceramics, incorporating embroidery, tufting, and wood carving—weaving new connections between microscopic vision, bodily perception, and spatial narrative. Her pieces resemble both makeshift shelters and folded private maps. Through repetitive handwork, placements of objects learnt from street-smart observations, she questions the boundaries between “use” and “trace”, exploring the hidden links between everyday objects and emotion, memory, repair. The works engage with the exhibition space, creating narratives that accommodate marginal gazes—an ant, a child, a used dishcloth—where ragged things grow into a tender kind of love.