KABUYA was inspired by dreams, our friendship and ancestry, and our beautiful worksite along Lake Washington. As part of the work, we organized an opening reception event that brought together performers in the installation for an afternoon to honor the land and the changing of the seasons.

While we were making KABUYA, Adria found out that her great grandmother had made braided fences around her home and garden in the Dominican Republic. This took our ongoing conversation about ancestry and tradition to a deeper and much more personal level. We named the piece (and our collaboration name, Studio Kabuya) after the term Adria’s great grandmother used for it, which refers to both the rope and the plant material used to make it.