Until the Words Become a Ditch is a work that explores the relationships between time, labor, materiality, memory, and technology through washboards and performance. The project consists of seven washboards, each engraved with the story of a woman close to me, with one board recording my own story. I took my board to a water channel and repeatedly rubbed the engraved text with a stone—these words recount past experiences of discrimination and unfair treatment—until the text blurred and grooves formed on the board’s surface.

The washboard, a traditional domestic tool, symbolizes the labor and silent sacrifices of my grandmother’s generation. By physically rubbing the text, I not only reenact the bodily and repetitive nature of labor but also metaphorically evoke the fading of memory, history, and personal experience. The laser-engraved text preserves the stories of these women, creating a dialogue between past and present, tradition and modernity, and the material and the spiritual.