Creating Chores with Shaina Yang
Collection 2, Season 2: Celebrating 20 years of friendship
When I told Shaina Yang (poet, architect, very first Chores collaborator, dearest friend) that this might be our last Chores season for the foreseeable future, her reaction both surprised and touched me.
If we count Collection 2, Season 2, Shaina and I will have completed five seasons of Chores together over four years — 38 coats with 38 poems.
It’s hard to believe that it all began in 2021 with my fairly random idea to do hand embroidery on vintage chore coats, followed by another fairly random idea about how fun and meaningful it would be to collaborate with one of my oldest and closest friends — especially one whose artistry has inspired me since we were young girls.
“I have this very precise yet very non-specific memory that I always end up at when we work on [Chores] — it’s in your old room back in Shanghai, where we’re sitting on the floor with papers all over the place, giggling. I’m sitting next to the balcony where out of the corner of my eye, I can see my own house across the way. And this gorgeous, gold-orange, late afternoon sun — filtered through the haze of summer smog — hits the floorboards, lighting up the grain.
You’re sitting near the foot of your bed, sketching. I’m scrawling away in one of my dozens of notebooks. We’re totally at peace, totally unself-conscious, totally absorbed in the work. It was so natural; so easy; so pure. And I put myself back there, and it somehow always gives me the — courage? inspiration? trust? reflex? — to write.”
—Shaina Yang
For our very first iteration of Chores back in 2021, I had asked Shaina to write poems to pair with the coats, and to give each coat a name. That ended up being the beginning of such a meaningful and enduring collaborative process for us both.
It was a joy for me to simply step back and watch Shaina’s skill unfold. Her talent for writing is one of those which feels like it just bleeds from her pores — effortless and unburdened, like breathing.
Though in Seasons 2-3 of Collection 1, I watched as Shaina gave herself increasingly challenging parameters to work with — learning how to take her own skill more seriously and to give more space to her writing practice.
I remember her cringing when I called her a poet, feeling so uncomfortable and undeserving of the title. But who is a poet if not someone who… writes poems?
“It’s like — you’ve always believed in my writing since we were kids, and I know you not-so-secretly think that I should write more, even though my creative focus has been architecture for the last near-decade — and so your very Joy Mao response to those conditions was to literally just create an opportunity that would coax more of my writing into the world.
I obliged without an enormous amount of expectation — and then accidentally ended up growing as a writer, which is honestly quite incredible to me! I was truly so proud of [season 2023’s] poetry, ironically in a very humbling sort of way.”
—Shaina Yang
I actually have the titles of Collection 2, Season 1 memorized — partly because the titles string together to create one 10-line poem (insane); partly because I had spent countless hours embroidering them into the linings of each coat, in Shaina’s handwriting.
For me, there was something so tender about spending that time with her words, literally tracing each sweep of her pen with a stitch at a time.
It had to be high fidelity, even if it meant flying Shaina into New York so that she could write the titles on painter’s tape and place them onto the coats. I can’t even tell you how many times I ripped out my first, second, or third embroidery attempts — just to make very slight adjustments to the curves in her ligatures.
Collection 2, Season 2 — “Twoness”
When we started work on this current season (Collection 2, Season 2), we decided on the theme of “twoness” — as an ode to our personal milestone of celebrating 20 years of friendship.
Shaina decided she wanted to write couplets:
This season’s poems have a sort of… vow/ode/almost fairy-tale-like quality to them, which was very inspiring to me as I worked through embroidery.
They may seem simple at first due to their brevity, but I feel so much depth and emotion in them. After all, Shaina’s had 20 years of us growing and learning alongside each other to draw from.
“The poems this time are very clearly like, my ode to you and our friendship — a celebration of our 20 years of “two-ness” and being a duo. 🥹
At the same time, there’s something very primordial about a couplet rhyme which evokes a level of purity and childhood-ness — which also really seemed to fit. Plus I had always wanted to do a season with rhyming! So this seemed like a wholesome opportunity.
The last four years have definitely been big growth years for both of us, I think it’s fair to say. In our respective professional practices, in our personal lives, and actually very much in our friendship too. As I was working on this season’s poems, I wanted to chart the purity and idyll of our childhood bond, yes, but also the strength and complexity that it has matured into as we have gotten more intentional about nurturing it.”
—Shaina Yang
“And that’s completely been mirrored in the arc of how Chores has developed over the past four years too — we’ve taken so many leaps to really stretch the bounds of the project, and in doing so stretch each other along the way.”
—Shaina Yang
Our friendship as a foundation
When we started Chores together nearly four years ago, Shaina and I simply set out to work with each other. We didn’t realize that by creating the open, collaborative process that we did, we would make space for more and more folks to join us in this kind of work.
“It feels quite full-circle in a way, to close this first chapter of Chores with an explicit ode to our friendship — because if I’m honest, that’s really the only thing that I started with five seasons ago. Write… poetry? For… coats? Sure, if you say so! Anything to finally get to co-create together like I always wanted to when we were kids!
So I kind of went into it purely for the practice of relishing in our kinship; the first season wasn’t thematically about friendship, but especially for me I think, it was very much for friendship. By contrast, five seasons in, the project has taken on so much complexity and meaning outside of the two of us.”
—Shaina Yang
“Our friendship has served as such a beautiful base framework for further collaboration, as the project has grown — you have been such a nexus for creation between wonderful people, and [this season also] celebrates how great it has felt to be a part of it all. 🥹 It’s very aspirational for me!
You have brought together so many — Lorraine, Echo, this season now Nicki, and in future seasons others I imagine — and let your work act as a conduit for all of us to share in. You clearly take a huge amount of genuine inspiration from it, and vice versa — making the coats themselves so pluralistic and beautiful, and adding so many dimensions.”
—Shaina Yang
For Shaina, myself, and many other creative folks who are used to working alone in a studio — it can be hard to invite others into your process, and to let go of creative control.
But there have been so many distinct moments throughout the process of creating Chores when I felt myself getting more and more comfortable with taking some steps back, and giving space for each collaborator to bring their own skill and soul to the work. It was scary and awkward at first, but after practicing it for five seasons with these big-hearted folks — it’s started to feel not only safe, but essential.
“It’s wonderfully decentralized and natural as a creative process — yet it’s still concise and conceptually strong — because your artistic practice, coordination skills, and creative vision ultimately form the beating core of it, intentionally and lovingly creating space for us to contribute. 💛
It’s the perfect antidote to a long western art history that has this mythical narrative of the singular genius or visionary — which all of us in the design world know is a root source of sooooo much industry toxicity — and it’s a beautiful return to more communal forms of creation that celebrate how individuality is amplified by collaboration rather than competition or isolation.”
—Shaina Yang
A tangible space to gather and celebrate
Last year’s season of Chores was so full of complexity and heart — we actually had a really hard time communicating about the project before/during/after we made it. There was this distinct moment after the coats were completed, when I looked up and was like — shouldn’t this work exist beyond just a few product listings on my website, or a few Instagram posts? Isn’t this… our artwork?
That’s when we decided to mount our very first Chores exhibition.
“From its earliest conceptions, this project has always been an explicit exercise in remote collaboration — a way for us to work together creatively even if our living on opposite coasts meant that it couldn’t always be performed together in the same literal space like it was back in your room in Shanghai.
“But perhaps because of that, I think we really were able to fully cherish how much physical presence and tactility were at the bones of the work. For every season, I’ve made at least one trip out to New York — to be able to touch the coats and whisper their names to them, to run my fingers over the embroidery, to turn each garment over in my hands, to try them on.
—Shaina Yang
“And so I think it was always obvious to us that being able to share the work in person was actually quite necessary! The exhibition last year was this wild idea that came together somehow in little more than a month — but it felt very much like the natural conclusion to a longstanding vein of logic that had run through the whole process. That I got to flex some muscles from my main creative field [of spatial design] was just the perfect cherry on top really.”
—Shaina Yang
It’s incredibly beautiful to me that the folks who come to view the work, wear the work, share the work — all become part of how the project gets to live in the world.
Collection 2, Season 2 — Exhibition
Shaina and I are very excited to be hosting our second exhibition of Chores Collection 2, Season 2 during the weekend of 12/7-12/8.
For a casual reception, join us:
Saturday, December 7th from 2-6pm
Exhibition Open Hours (rsvp)
For a more in-depth conversation about the work with myself, Shaina, Nicki, and Echo:
Sunday, December 8th from 11:30am-1:30pm
Artist Talk and Brunch (rsvp)
To shop the collection:
Visit joymao.com starting
Monday, December 9th at 12pm EST
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Thanks very much for tuning in — we are so grateful to share this time and space with you!
