Faces in Shift

Category: Apparel

Faces in Shift explores the fluid, performative nature of cultural identity through a leather garment rooted in Taiwanese Indigenous mythology, centred on the hundred-pace snake (Deinagkistrodon acutus), revered as a sacred ancestral guardian in Indigenous cosmology. As identity shifts and resurfaces across different contexts, so too does the face the wearer presents to the world: the garment becomes a second skin that registers this constant negotiation. The piece is constructed from vegetable-tanned leather, dyed using traditional persimmon tannin (kakishibu) techniques and finished with iron-mordant botanical printing, where plant matter is pressed directly onto the leather surface to transfer organic, asymmetrical patterning reminiscent of snake-skin markings. Wax-resist (batik) techniques are used to control dye penetration and create controlled negative space, echoing the geometric diamond motifs traditionally associated with the hundred-pace snake in Indigenous textile and carving traditions. The garment was developed in close collaboration with Truku Indigenous person Miyaw, integrating cross-Indigenous material knowledge into a contemporary wearable form. Rather than illustrating Indigenous symbolism literally, the design treats the body as a living surface, shifting and moving with the wearer and mirroring the snake's symbolic role as a boundary figure between human and ancestral worlds.

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