Saying Goodbye to AiR Sun Forest!

March 26, 2026

At the end of last week we said our goodbyes to our February – March Artist in Residence, Sun Forest. Six weeks really flew by!! We are really going to miss Sun, but we are so thankful for the joy she brought to this community through her creative process and knowledge sharing.

While she was here, Sun created many lengths of beautiful deep blue biomaterial fabric, which will be used to create a cloaking device for performance art. She also created stunning cut-outs from these fabrics, of plants and their root systems, amongst other culturally significant imagery. Here are a few words from Sun about what she was working on:

“This ongoing project, developed during my residency at Eastern Edge, centres on a speculative counter-surveillance celestial wayfinding cloaking device. The project reimagines the Korean ssugaechima as a seeded biomaterial interface that is conductive, living, and attuned to ancestral memory. Operating between garment, map, and sensing apparatus, the cloak functions as a site of healing and refusal from hyper-visibility. Seaweed-based biopolymers, algae, and chroma-key feedback are mobilized to construct a multidimensional archive where memory is carried through touch, scent, and bioelectric signal. Embedded with medicinal seeds and bio-conductive ink, the cloak functions as metabolic interface: fermenting, sensing, and transmitting ecological and ancestral data. The asterisms within the work are not fixed forms but relational patterns, shaped by plant life, myth, and non-Western cosmologies. Consequently, this project considers how diaspora acts as a living system, how opacity becomes a mode of survival, and how the speculative return emerges through ecological entanglement and transgenerational resistance.”

During her residency, Sun also facilitated two outstanding Biomaterials Workshops that really activated participants’ sense of curiosity and playfulness. Allowing participants the chance to explore a child-like sense of creative experimentation, the workshop was a true bright spot during this long Winter! We are so grateful to her for sharing recipes and engaging the community in valuable conversations about the environmental and social impact of art-making.

Saying goodbye was bittersweet, of course, but EE staff felt so lucky to have the chance to play around with biomaterials one last time with Sun before she left! We had such a fun time making a large length of our own biomaterial “fabric”, which we will keep in our studio space and cherish forever. <3 Thank you, Sun, for everything! We will miss you so much, and wish you the very best in your next adventures!