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November Fiber Picks

Taking a Thread for a Walk
Organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and Andrew Gardner, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, Through April 19, 2020. This exhibition is a part of MoMA Opening Season Fall 2019

“Just as it is possible to go from any place to any other, so also, starting from a defined and specialized field, can one arrive at a realization of ever-extending relationships...traced back to the event of a thread.” – Anni Albers, 1965

"True to its title, this exhibition takes a thread for a walk among ancient textile traditions, early-20th-century design reform movements, and industrial materials and production methods. Featuring adventurous combinations of natural and synthetic fibers and spatially dynamic pieces that mark the emergence of more a sculptural approach to textile art beginning in the 1960s, this show highlights the fluid expressivity of the medium." 

Fanny Allié. The Pearl, 2019. Collage and Mixed Media on Fabric

WELCOME / New Member Exhibition
Curated by Bill Carroll
September 17, 2019 - December 6, 2019

The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts

The New Member Exhibition held at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts showcases the work of six artists in their EFA Studio Program ranging from digital media to fabric collage. Fanny Allié’s practice explores the relationship between the body, the human, and the urban landscape. Allié is inspired by remnants, refuse, and the lost elements of daily existence that are often overlooked. She incorporates collages, collagraph prints, installations, and mixed media through her work, and is one of six exceptional artists that began their two-year renewable membership in the EFA Studio Program.

Exhibition view, Burke Prize 2019

Burke Prize 2019
Curated by Samantha De Tillio and Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy with support from Alida Jekabson
October 3, 2019 - April 12, 2020
Museum of Arts and Design

Burke Prize 2019 is a group exhibition featuring crafts from sixteen finalists for the Museum's Burke Prize, awarded to a contemporary artist under the age of forty-five working in glass, fiber, clay, metal, and/or wood. This award aims to encourage growth and experimentation among a new generation of artists who are advancing the craft disciplines. Throughout the selection of works in Burke Prize 2019, the artists explore emerging voices expanding the disciplines at the core of American studio craft movement whose highly accomplished work demonstrates a strong use of materials, innovative processes, and conceptual rigor and relevance. The individual pieces encompass a wide range of themes, including explorations of the immigrant experience, contemplations of the past through the lens of material culture, and meditations on whose stories we choose to memorialize. Together, they constitute a timely reflection on what it means to be American today. 

Jordan Nassar, Between Sky and Earth, 2018. Hand embroidered cotton on cotton. Kamel Lazaar Foundation © Jordan Nassar. Image courtesy Anat Ebgi Gallery

Between Sky and Earth: Jordan Nassar
Curated by Alexander J. Bacon
November 17, 2019 - January 5, 2020

Between Sky and Earth features hand embroidery by Jordan Nassar, an artist of Palestinian descent who lives and works in New York City. Nassar’s works embodies the conversation between embroidery and painting. The exhibition highlights the traditional Palestinian cross-stitch patterns that are passed down primarily from mother to daughter as part of an indigenous craft tradition supported through informal familial networks. Throughout the selection of works in Between Sky and Earth, the artist explores issues as varied as language and ethnicity and concerns such as heritage and homeland, belonging and alienation

Brent Wadden. Untitled, 2019. Hand woven fibers, wool, cotton and acrylic on canvas in the artist's frame. 90 5/8 by 57 1/2 in.  230.2 by 146.1 cm.

Brent Wadden: Second Life
November 1 - Desember 21, 2019
Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Second Life is Canadian-born artist Brent Wadden’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Featuring a series of colorful, large-scale woven panels created on traditional floor looms with a mix of new and second-hand fibers, Wadden’s new works collapses the boundaries between physical process and aesthetic content. Throughout the selection of works, the artist’s deliberate use of the word “painting” to describe his woven works emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining explicit distinctions between high art and craft in a time where the qualities that define the privileged labor of the artist are no longer clear cut. Additionally, Wadden’s work disrupts the gender binaries that have persisted in a medium traditionally relegated to the domestic domain.

Stanley Bulbach. Times Square, a flying carpet (c) 2011. Wool

Interwoven over Millennia: East, West, Ancient and New
November 26 - December 6 2019
Richard Ettinghausen Library

Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Interwoven over Millennia: East, West, Ancient and New features the contemporary fiber art by Stanley Bulbach. The exhibition highlights his contemporary imagery through the wool spinning, dyeing, and weaving. Bulbach’s work embodies the arts, technologies, and traditions of the ancient civilizations upon which the modern East and West are founded. Throughout the selection of works in Interwoven over Millennia, the artist emphasizes these age old utilitarian arts and technologies not only protected humanity from the elements but also became “canvases” on which the way ancient cultures illustrated the world as they saw and understood it.

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