Events · AIR Open Studio
A garment arrives unfinished. A hand makes a line. Another hand follows it with thread. The room becomes part workshop, part dinner, part music.
The Open Studio at AIR begins with an invitation rather than a finished answer: choose a garment, take a marker and add something of your own. A drawing can be awkward, quick, precise, funny or unsure. That difference is the point.
UKENA’s studio team stays close, not to correct the drawing, but to understand its movement. The mark is then carried into embroidery. What began as one person’s gesture becomes a conversation between hand, machine, cloth and the people around the table.
01 · Draw
Visitors draw directly onto garments. There is no separate audience standing outside the work. Looking becomes choosing, touching and adding a line.
A line in motion
The quick loops keep the story close to how the day felt: hands moving, people interrupting each other, a joke landing, another line appearing.
02 · Translate
Embroidery does not erase the hesitation of the drawing. The team reads its pace, scale and pressure, then guides it through the machine while the participant watches the transformation happen.
Hand · machine · cloth
The movement is guided in real time. The irregularity remains visible, because it carries the person who made the first mark.
03 · Wear
Some works stay minimal. Others become dense. Words sit beside spirals, jokes beside quieter gestures. Once worn, the garment begins another chapter through posture and movement.
The result moves
What looked one way on the table changes on a body. A turn reveals a second drawing. A sleeve interrupts a line. The work becomes less fixed and more alive.
04 · Gather
After drawing and stitching, food arrives. Banana leaves, flowers, plates and shared dishes take over the work surface. Making and eating are not separate programmes. They belong to the same social space.
People stay, talk, try things on, listen to music and see what everyone else made.
The room keeps moving
The closing rhythm is deliberately loose. The studio is still visible around the gathering: thread wall, machines, unfinished pieces and the people who made the day.
Photographs: Flendy Arie, as credited in the source image metadata. Open Studio at AIR. Individual participant names and final publication permissions remain to verify before release.
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