Music & Film
by haana lee
Mail Art
by Sara Roberts
about the art
Pulled Strands pairs art by haana lee and Sara Roberts to explore fissures, fractures, and how they can be repaired—whether by cutting, stitching, or simply paying attention. Instead of avoiding moments of rupture, the artists engage in intimate gestures that consider what might emerge from these fragile materials.
In their film “but was it me trying to hide, or you not wanting to see?”, haana lee creates a moving portrait of the search for bodily presence and lost memories in the wake of trauma. The film documents haana lee shaving their head and sorting the shorn hair, set against imagery of burning candles, traced wax, and water. The sound of the electric razor—transformed by analogue effects into a droning score—evokes both ritual and breath. By layering footage from different cameras, haana lee mirrors the disorientation of trauma, where multiple moments in time are felt at once. What unfolds is not only a personal reckoning, but a sensory meditation on the effort to stay present while tending to the fragmentation trauma leaves behind.
By delicately stitching, tangling, untangling, and mending fallen plant matter, Sara Roberts places human-made techniques alongside the intricate structures of plants—revealing the staggering complexity and detail of nature’s fabric. Shawl for Lolly Willowes was made for the fictional heroine of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 novel, who escapes domestic life for wild solitude, eventually making a pact with the devil to remain free. Worn here by Sara, the shawl is sewn from Ramalina menziesii, or lace lichen—named for its delicate, net-like form. Nearly disappearing beneath the shawl’s camouflage, Sara suggests that freedom might be found in invisibility—in hiding alongside the world’s slow, transformative processes with care, humility, and wonder.