Abstract
This paper positions textile-making as a way of understanding the world through embodied engagement with materials, processes and relationships. Drawing on Xiang embroidery traditions and the Chinese philosophical concept of Qi-Yun (vital force and resonant rhythm). Through participatory workshops with local communities in Hunan, China, it explores how tacit knowledge emerges in a specific context through inner perception, observation, collaboration and dialogue surrounding material interaction and the accumulation of experience. A triangular methodology is developed to analyse multiple standpoints (traditional practitioners, technical collaborators and spectators) and articulate how different standpoints participate in meaning-making within textile practice. This approach theorises embroidery as Qi-Yun flow, rather than a static cultural symbol. It contributes to pluriversal debates by bringing Chinese cosmological thought into dialogue with global discourses on decolonial and Indigenous knowledge systems, as well as having wider implications for design research and cultural knowledge transmission.
Keywords
Xiang embroidery; tacit knowledge; making; Chinese Cosmology
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1120
Citation
Chen, M. (2026) Decoding the Visual Language of Embroidery: Making, Knowing, and Recontextualising, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1120
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Decoding the Visual Language of Embroidery: Making, Knowing, and Recontextualising
This paper positions textile-making as a way of understanding the world through embodied engagement with materials, processes and relationships. Drawing on Xiang embroidery traditions and the Chinese philosophical concept of Qi-Yun (vital force and resonant rhythm). Through participatory workshops with local communities in Hunan, China, it explores how tacit knowledge emerges in a specific context through inner perception, observation, collaboration and dialogue surrounding material interaction and the accumulation of experience. A triangular methodology is developed to analyse multiple standpoints (traditional practitioners, technical collaborators and spectators) and articulate how different standpoints participate in meaning-making within textile practice. This approach theorises embroidery as Qi-Yun flow, rather than a static cultural symbol. It contributes to pluriversal debates by bringing Chinese cosmological thought into dialogue with global discourses on decolonial and Indigenous knowledge systems, as well as having wider implications for design research and cultural knowledge transmission.