El Espacio 23 |

Jorge Eielson (b. 1924, Peru; d. 2006, Italy)

Quipus 79b, 1978
Painted canvas over wood

Quipu knots became the formal and conceptual focus of works by Jorge E. Eielson beginning in 1963. Used by various ancient cultures of the Andean region, including the Inca of the artist’s native Peru, these knotted strings are understood as having served as numerical devices for collecting data, such as census and tax records or calendrical information. The full meaning of these patterned knots remains enigmatic however, a quality that drew the artist to engage them as symbols of a sophisticated, but not fully accessible cultural past. Working primarily in Rome, Eielson was in dialogue with avant-garde painting tendencies and his works evidence transnational interests in the monochrome and shaped canvas experiments, by pulling and knotting his paintings’ canvases into Quipu knots, as in the all-white Quipus 79b.

Elena del Rivero (b. 1949, Spain)

Letter from the Bride (117), 1997
Needles, thread, and embroidery on paper

Olga de Amaral (b. 1932, Colombia)

Modular 77 (Agua 2), 1977
Wool and horsehair

Olga de Amaral (b. 1932, Colombia)

Lienzo 30, 2001
Linen, gesso, and acrylic

Olga de Amaral was one of the artists who revolutionized tapestry during the 1960s and promoted it as an art form of equal importance to that of painting or sculpture, is known for her recurrent use of gold. She first used gold in small works produced in 1975 titled Complete Fragments, but quickly expanded its use into large wall works and immersive installations. Her engagement with the material is tied to its symbolic uses within the Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Baroque contexts of her native Colombia, with her titles emphasizing its references to the sun. Silver is additionally prevalent within her practice, as a symbol of the moon.

While celestial, landscape and ritual references appear in many of de Amaral’s titles, equally recurrent are notes on seriality, references that nod to her Post-Minimalist interests. This is the case with the two works included in the show, titled Lienzo 30 and Modular 77 (Agua 2), with the latter prominently displayed on the entrance wall. Lienzo 30 is made of densely layered threads of silver, lavender tones. These are held within a structure that can be displayed in two distinct ways. The first is flat, like a painting, the second suspended from the ceiling, allowing its threads to hang outward and vertically at different lengths, creating a more sculptural situation. The experimental nature of the artist’s practice is revealed in each artworks three-dimensionality, through which they seek a directly phenomenological relationship with the viewer’s body, an interaction not traditionally associated with weavings and tapestry.

Gene Davis (b. 1920, United States; d. 1985, United States)

Monet’s Garden, 1980
Acrylic and graphite on canvas

Gene Davis (b. 1920, United States; d. 1985, United States)

Three Sisters, ca. 1982
Acrylic on canvas

Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland, both featured in this exhibition, were principal artists in what became known as ‘Color Field Painting.’ They were influenced in the 1950s by Helen Frankenthaler’s stained-canvas techniques, which represented a formal and conceptual integration of paint and ground, involving diluted acrylic paint being soaked into the threads of her canvases. Each of them experimented with their own versions of similar processes. The two paintings by Gene Davis in the exhibition display variations on compositions made up of thin lines of stained paint. In Three Sisters these lines are compartmentalized into three vertical sections, while in Monet’s Garden the entire surface is covered with these delicately stained lines. The precision and tight placement of these lines dialogue with how thread is positioned within weaving or embroidery.

Yanira Collado (b. 1975, United States)

Penumbras para Apambichao 5, 2022
Textile sourced from men’s Palm Beach suits (1920s and 1950–70s), paper, paint, cardboard, ink, and mixed media

Cut pieces of fabric serve as surrogates for historical and emotional trauma in several works in this gallery, including Yanira Collardo’s Penumbras para Apambichao 5. This vertical, portal-like piece is based on the artist’s research of the Apambichao music of the Dominican Republic and how it offered a slower version of cumbia for the North American soldiers who were stationed on the island in the 1950s. These soldiers wore white uniforms within these dancehalls, cut fragments of which are included in Collardo’s artwork. She layers these pieces of fabric with others that reference the cultural mixing that structure Dominican identity, which include African, Islamic, Chinese, and European sources.

Manuel Chavajay (b. 1982, Guatemala)

Untitled, from the series “K’o q’iij ne t’i’lto’ ja juyu’ t’aq’aaj, 2023
Burnt motor oil, watercolor, and embroidery on cotton paper

Untitled, from the series “K’o q’iij ne t’i’lto’ ja juyu’ t’aq’aaj, 2023
Burnt motor oil, watercolor, and embroidery on cotton paper

Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985, Argentina)

Estado de espíritu I, 2022
Adobe and iron

Elizabet Cerviño (b. 1986, Cuba)

Recuento, 2022
Hand-woven sisal fiber

Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978, United Kingdom)

Sol Sonora del Sur, 2022
Hand-dyed artisanal ﬁshing net, lead weights, gold-plated polished steel plate, copper bells, jade stone, and brass keys

Sol Sonora del Sur is part of the sculptural Cosmotarrayas series. The title of the series combines references to the cosmos and atarraya, meaning “cast net” in Spanish. These weavings reference traditional fishing nets used by many indigenous communities throughout Latin America, with the title of this work specifically honoring those produced by the Yaqui tribe and used on the Yaqui River in the State of Sonora, Mexico.

The sculptures are part of an ongoing investigative project titled Be Damned, that the artist began along the Magdalena River in Colombia. She lived and worked in these waterside communities during the period before a massive dam was built, which blocked the river’s flow and had disastrous ecological and cultural effects on neighboring areas. The open or loose weave of the net sculptures represent the porous nature of borders between land, water, living beings and spiritual realms, as understood in the belief systems of traditional riverside communities, values being disregarded and lost within the context of these massive, militarized hydroelectrical projects.

Nick Cave (b. 1959, United States)

Soundsuit, 2006
Afghan, cotton and found beaded fabric, mannequin, and armature

Carlos Castro (b. 1976, Colombia)

La creación del unicornio, de la serie Mythstories 2019
Woven gobelin

Violence related to narcotrafficking in Colombia is the subject of Carlos Castro’s work, which draws inspiration from the European tradition of tapestry as symbols of royalty and wealth. The piece La creación del unicornio (The Creation of the Unicorn) presents an altered copy of the Gothic period tapestry The Unicorn is Found, from the series The Hunt of the Unicorn, made in The Netherlands around 1495-1505 and currently in the collection of The Met Cloisters in New York. The artist has inserted a woven portrait of drug lord Pablo Escobar into the composition which then turns into a reference of the exotic collection of animals Escobar was known to have assembled at his Hacienda Nápoles.

Leyla Cárdenas (b. 1975, Colombia)

Mutual Dissolution, 2019
Unweaved dye-sublimated fabric

Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico)

Guadalajara, México. 9 de marzo 2021.
Marcha del 8M. II de la serie Manifestantes, 2022
Cotton thread sewn on cotton canvas, high-density acrylic paint, and acrylic sealer

Manila, Filipinas, 23 de febrero 2018.
Marcha para frenar la cultura de la violación, de la serie Manifestantes, 2022
Cotton thread sewn on cotton canvas, high-density acrylic paint, and acrylic sealer

These two works are part of the Manifestantes series, which begun in 2019, during feminist protests in Mexico referred to as the “glitter revolution,” when thousands of women marched against targeted violence of women, initially provoked by reports of the rape a teenage girl by the police. The artist creates portraits of protestors using thread on cotton fabric, based on images taken from social media. Red fabric and paint with white thread is used for portraits of individual women protestors and black for group portraits. Candiani describes her use of sewing as a gesture toward amplifying these representations and the outrage of these women, a form of “drawing out loud.” With the site of each specific protest identified in the titles the works, the artist’s project has grown to include feminist protests currently taking place across the world.

Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico)

Lipo Front and Back, from the series Gordas, 2002–05
Acrylic paint, charcoal, and cotton thread sewn on canvas

Several works engaging the bare human body address the issues of vulnerability, identity, and societal perceptions, most dramatically represented by a gigantic diptych by Tania Candiani. Part of her Gordas series (2002-05), which focuses on the problems of women’s self-image, related to their bodies and the industries that promote idealized, unrealistically thin female physiques, this piece presents a front and a back view of the same elder-looking woman. Rendered in embroidery on canvas, the diptych is based on photographs used by plastic surgeons to mark the areas they recommend incisions to be made during liposuction procedures. The artist has instead used the markings to fill the canvas with cotton stuffing, creating a voluminous portrait of a woman submitting herself to this invasive weight-reduction process.

From left to right

Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico)

Guadalajara, México. 9 de marzo 2021.
Marcha del 8M. II de la serie Manifestantes, 2022
Cotton thread sewn on cotton canvas, high-density acrylic paint, and acrylic sealer

Bisa Butler (b. 1973, United States)

Mobile Madonna, 2022
Cotton, silk, wool, and velvet quilted and appliquéd

Carlos Bunga (b. 1976, Portugal)

Alfombra #12, 2023
Latex and glue on rug

James Brown (b. 1951, United States; d. 2020, Mexico)

Color Study (266), 2007
Oil on folded linen mounted on canvas

Color Study (270), 2010
Oil on folded linen mounted on canvas

From left to right

Alighiero Boetti (b. 1940, Italy; d. 1994, Italy)

Divine Astrazioni, 1987
Embroidery on canvas

Udire tra le parole (Nove quadrati), 1979
Watercolor on handmade paper

These two small works, one a watercolor and the second an embroidery on canvas, present the abstracted forms of European lettering across a checkerboard structure, creating concrete poems that are difficult to decipher. The embroidered work, titled Divine astrazioni is part of the Arazzi series which often mixed words from the artist’s native Italian with Persian, the language spoken by the Afghani women who embroidered these works for the artist.