Tanya Aguiñiga. Photo courtesy Armory Center for the Arts
Tanya Aguiñiga, a Los Angeles based artist/designer/craftsperson who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico, will deliver a live weaving performance on Instagram in the Armory Center for the Arts’ main gallery in Pasadena this coming Wednesday, May 27, starting at 4 p.m.
Her exhibition at the Armory, called “Borderlands Within” or “La Frontera Adentro,” had barely opened before quarantine restrictions were imposed in March due to the coronavirus emergency.
Its centerpiece is Ejercicios en Entendimiento (Exercises in Understanding) – a room-sized loom that spans and divides the main floor.
On Wednesday, Tanya Aguiñiga will finally get to activate and complete the piece, live on Instagram.
Using her body as the loom’s shuttle, she’ll weave a horizontal wall within the gallery, using strips of cotton dyed with pigment made from rusted fragments of the US/Mexico border wall. The artist describes the performance as “an attempt to learn through my body.”
“I am entering into spaces of strain and unnatural situations with craft-based materials to connect to and further process my border and immigrant experience,” Aguiñiga said. “Using cotton dyed with the pulverized U.S./Mexico border, I am weaving a horizontal wall within the Armory’s gallery. My body is the vessel (shuttle) for transporting border-stained fiber and weaving a solid surface between gallery hemispheres. My body carries, pushes, and pulls the weft (fiber) over and under the warp (rope dividing the gallery space).”
Aguiñiga holds an MFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from San Diego State University. In her formative years, she created various collaborative installations with the Border Arts Workshop, an artists’ group that engages the languages of activism and community-based public art.
Her current work uses craft as a performative medium to generate dialogues about identity, culture and gender while creating community. This approach has helped museums and non-profits in the United States and Mexico diversify their audiences by connecting marginalized communities through collaboration.
This performance will stream live for approximately 30 minutes.
To watch, follow Armory Center for the Arts, @armoryarts and visit the performance page, www.armoryarts.org/schedule/
