ARTFORUM TAPESTRY SERIES
2019-2022, materials: Artforum magazine pages, waxed linen thread, jewelry wire, metal
Artforum Tapestry XII, detail
In this series, I repurpose the pages of Artforum magazine to reflect on the relationship between consumerism, gender and the contemporary art market. The pages, rolled and bound with wire, simultaneously hide and reveal content, signifying the tension of inclusion and exclusion within the market. Threaded together, pages containing art criticism and glossy advertisements are reimagined from historically situated texts into a perceptual field of color, composition and poetics. In this transformative process, I adapt the power dynamics of the traditionally male-dominated art market into the traditionally feminine craft of tapestries.
I began this body of work in 2019. Personally, it has evolved to hold multiple paradoxes related to the art market and my art practice. The magazines which started with my own collection soon after included the collections of fellow D.C. area artists, taking on a useful repurposing and space making from those long-held collections. It also provided decades of perspective on the art market as I deconstructed the magazines. This proved to be both mind-blowingly irritating, as I observed patterns of the artists who have been repeatedly forwarded, but also wildly therapeutic in the ripping, cutting and sorting of those pages. The process reminded me of the Louise Bourgeois statement, “I do, I undo, I redo.” This way of working has been with me in earlier works, but somehow all the more poignant to me in this series.
The assembling and weaving of these tapestries is where I am perhaps most grounded in the way that I practice, since it bridges the conceptual and meditative components of the making together in the overall form. Working between bits of images and text revealed and hidden in the rolls and the repetition in the construction, I feel a full sense of embodiment in the process, which is slow and unfolding. This speaks to my personal rhythm and a quality I hope is also communicated in the final work.
I began this body of work in 2019. Personally, it has evolved to hold multiple paradoxes related to the art market and my art practice. The magazines which started with my own collection soon after included the collections of fellow D.C. area artists, taking on a useful repurposing and space making from those long-held collections. It also provided decades of perspective on the art market as I deconstructed the magazines. This proved to be both mind-blowingly irritating, as I observed patterns of the artists who have been repeatedly forwarded, but also wildly therapeutic in the ripping, cutting and sorting of those pages. The process reminded me of the Louise Bourgeois statement, “I do, I undo, I redo.” This way of working has been with me in earlier works, but somehow all the more poignant to me in this series.
The assembling and weaving of these tapestries is where I am perhaps most grounded in the way that I practice, since it bridges the conceptual and meditative components of the making together in the overall form. Working between bits of images and text revealed and hidden in the rolls and the repetition in the construction, I feel a full sense of embodiment in the process, which is slow and unfolding. This speaks to my personal rhythm and a quality I hope is also communicated in the final work.
