Founded in 2025 by community-focused textile artist Joy Mao, Chores creates space for a uniquely collaborative way of making. Each season of Chores begins with a cohort of artisans and an intimate personal story. From this shared lens, a collection is crafted through parallel creative processes that weave together each contributor's perspectives and skills. The resulting objects serve as talismans that ground us to this world — connecting us through our stories, and reminding us of what we hold dear.
Chores artisans blend an eye for art with a hand for craft — bridging bordering worlds to create functional, everyday objects imbued with artistry and the touch of human stories.
Vested with these traces of our humanity, these objects become talismans — those special items that create bridges between art and life, us and our stories. Such objects, treated with care, can show us the transformative power of combining ordinary utility with extraordinary intention.
By engaging the power of collective storytelling through craft, Chores asks us to deepen relationships with ourselves, our communities, and our contexts.
The work, in turn, responds with just rewards: each Chores object brings magic to the mundane, and focus to the everyday efforts that empower us to transform our worlds.
Chores began in 2020 as a project in Joy Mao’s textile art practice, featuring her hand-embroidered interventions on vintage garments. From 2021-2024, Mao crafted 38 hand-embroidered chore coats over five seasons — each unique and containing its own stories, collaborations, and secrets.
Transformed in 2025 into its own collaborative creative studio, Chores today continues the legacy of Mao’s original project: each new object in the Chores universe is given a name and a number, honoring the lineage that began in 2020 — reminding us of the hidden labor behind creative work, and the collective memory that we are all a part of.
01 The Wanderer
02 Kismet
03 The Drink
04 Oracle Bones
05 The Storm
06 Roots
07 Traces
08 The Water
09 Incarnations
10 The Kitchen
11 Companions
12 The Warm
13 The Gift
14 Habits
15 The Same
16 Magic
17 The Surgery
18 Presence
19 No matter
20 The distance
21 Between these shores
22 Their sands still smooth
23 These old soles
24 The same
25 All the world’s
26 Seasides
27 As if but one
28 To me
29 it was never our fault
30 the treehouse
31 flowers
32 we both do
33 囍
34 who am I?
35 thank goodness
36 promise
37 happily
38 sisters
Charm 1: You & I
Charm 2: wished upon
Charm 3: fallen stars
Charm 4: dandelion seeds
Charm 5: copper pennies
Charm 6: curved bone
Charm 7: Always longing
Charm 8: to fly
Charm 9: on high
Charm 10: ever lasting
Charm 11: rain & shine
Charm 12: sailing home
39 The Boy and The River
40 The Current
41 The Paper Boat
42 The Willow
43 The Swallow
44 The Butterfly
45 The Bee
46 The Ferry
47 The Rain
48 The Clouds
Coming soon
