Museum of Embodied Knowledge
Liberatha Alibalio is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her work is driven by research, prioritising the exploration of materials and techniques in the development of new work and often working with textiles, performance, and video. She is inspired by self-knowledge including memory and history, and how it informs the consciousness and contemporary narratives. Her work is storytelling, re-learning and tracing patterns of self, nature, spirit and materiality through art making, embodying her connection to places and traditional cultural practices as research and making.
In Huntly, Liberatha explored histories of wool and the processing of wool, initially through embodying and reimagining the practice of spinning in some of the places that cited spinning, dying, weaving machinery in the town. Liberatha's practice questions how we come to embody knowledge - knowledge that is physical, spiritual, as opposed to taught, with some presumption that this is linked to ancestral and inherited knowledge. Do we feel the movement of a spinning wheel as muscle memory from our grandmother?
During this project, Liberatha will connected people and places that have memory of wool spinning, dyeing and weaving, whilst learning to spin herself.
Liberatha worked closely with Daisy Williamson, a local artist and tapestry weaver. Following the residency, and after spinning fleece together and exchanging ideas, methods and samples, Daisy created a response to Liberatha's work after Liberatha had returned home. This included a small tapestry, an 'egg' of wool, a reflective text and song. Click more in the menu to see some of these.
About the artist:
Liberatha Alibailio has participated in exhibitions and residencies nationally and internationally including East Africa Art Biennale (2019), Nafasi Art Space (Tanzania) (2021), Modzi Arts (Zambia). She was part of the second edition of Congo Biennial (DRC) (2022), nominated for the Henrike Gross Art Award (2022) and a participant in the 2022 Asiko Art School with CCA Lagos (Nigeria).