• Hecho a Mano

    22 February - 22 March, 2024
  • Cecilia Brunson Projects is delighted to present Hecho a Mano, a group exhibition bringing together textile art from across Latin America in a contemporary response to the region’s rich history of textile tradition and its relationship with European Modernism. Spanning from the catalytic moment of 1950s Brazil to the present day, the exhibition includes works by Claudia Alarcón & Silät, Feliciano Centurión, Judith Lauand, Sandra Monterroso, Lucía Pizzani, Fátima Rodrigo, Eduardo Terrazas & Johanna Unzueta.
     
    The exhibition seeks to move away from clichéd understandings of Latin American textile production and critically consider the historic European enchantment with pre-Columbian and indigenous culture. Reflecting the diversity of traditional and contemporary practices in the region, the artists on display are united in their commitment to the handmade as an expression of hope and resistance to mass production and appropriation.
  • The 1950s were a transformative moment in Latin American art, when artists in Brazil turned towards geometric abstraction, influenced by...
    Judith Lauand, Untitled (Acervo 8, Concreto), 1954, wool needlepoint tapestry, 57 x 62 cm (23 1/4 x 24 3/4 in)
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    The 1950s were a transformative moment in Latin American art, when artists in Brazil turned towards geometric abstraction, influenced by the work of European concrete artists such as Max Bill and Josef Albers being exhibited in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We are pleased to present two rare needlepoint tapestries by Judith Lauand (São Paulo, 1922-2022), which not only reflect the abrupt and enthusiastic embrace of avant-garde ideas amongst her peers, but distil the tension between mathematical precision and attentiveness towards materiality that formed the foundations of a distinctly Brazilian strand of modernism. The slow, calculated and deliberate act of weaving lends itself to the geometric rigour of the movement, offset by the soft and pliable thread which inevitably wavers from the grid.
     
    Judith Lauand, who for a long time did not receive the attention of her male peers, is celebrated this year at la Biennale di Venezia in Adriano Pedrosa’s curation that seeks to recentre pivotal artists from the Global South. Lauand’s tapestries, and her commitment to women’s artistic traditions and what they could offer to the burgeoning concrete movement, constitute a significant and unique contribution to Brazilian art.
  • While European concrete artists had a significant influence on modernism across South America, this was a reciprocal exchange. For example, Anni Albers’ celebrated textiles owe much to the longstanding traditions of geometric abstraction existing across Central and South America within numerous indigenous cultures. There is a tendency to see this subject matter as belonging to a lost time, brought into the contemporary and the realms of fine art by these travelling artists. We seek to address this unfocused celebration of distinct and still-evolving artistic practices.
     
    Claudia Alarcón (b. 1989, Salta Province, Argentina) and the Silät collective (formed 2023) play an integral role in rewriting this narrative. The textile collective, formed of women from the indigenous Wichí communities of the Gran Chaco region, continue the tradition of weaving with vegetal fibres and natural dyes passed down through generations of women. They participate in the preservation and development of a centuries-old visual culture, under Alarcón’s coordination, producing abstract compositions that are formed of a lexicon of Wichí patterns and continually redirected by the weavers’ intuitive, fluid and communicative way of working.
  • Eduardo Terrazas (b. 1937, Guadalajara), has long been celebrated in Mexico’s contemporary art scene for his adoption and reinterpretation of...

    Eduardo Terrazas, Cosmos series, 2016, wool yarn on wooden board covered with Campeche wax, each 34.4 x 34.4 x 6 cm (13 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 2 3/8 in)

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    Eduardo Terrazas (b. 1937, Guadalajara), has long been celebrated in Mexico’s contemporary art scene for his adoption and reinterpretation of local artisanal techniques, first in his logo design for the 1968 Olympic games.
     
    Stylistically close with the geometric abstraction that is fundamental to modernism across the Americas, Terrazas’s appropriation of elements from Mexican folk art and embrace of a craft aesthetic has contributed to his unique visual language, and puts forward a Latin American textile tradition beyond ethnographic interest and as ground for more universal concerns.
  • Eduardo Terrazas, Tablas 2.61, 2015, wool yarn on wooden board covered with Campeche wax, four pieces, each 90 x 90 x 4.5 cm (35 1/2 x 35 1/2 x 1 3/4 in)
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  • Textile’s historical attachment to marginalised groups (prevalent in Latin America in indigenous visual cultures as well as being predominantly a women’s craft), has opened it up for reinterpretation by many queer artists as an existing mechanism to dissect experiences of marginality.
     
    In the 1990s, Feliciano Centurión (Paraguay, 1962-1996) produced intimate embroidered textiles that paid homage to indigenous Guaraní weaving techniques, queering a tradition passed down from mothers to daughters in Paraguay for generations. He exploited the poetic values of textile: sewing as a means to repair; textile craft as a therapeutic act; blankets and pillowcases as objects of comfort. Through his battle with AIDS, textile art offered a means to convert his experiences into objects of beauty, created with tender care and providing a focal point for feelings of hope and love. He embroidered domestic and personal objects such as pillowcases and aprons with aphorisms of love, abstract thoughts and religious references, exposing intimate emotions in a direct way.

  • There is an affinity between the symbology in Centurión’s work and that of Fátima Rodrigo (b. 1987, Lima). Using embroidery, appliqué and beadwork, Rodrigo adorns her tapestries with Andean symbols of celebration and resistance in an attempt to reclaim a culture which has been routinely extracted and appropriated for commercial purposes, particularly by the fashion industry.

  • Fátima Rodrigo, Ejercicios de resistencia [Exercises in resistence], 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Fátima Rodrigo, Ejercicios de resistencia [Exercises in resistence], 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Installation view, Hecho a Mano, Cecilia Brunson Projects, 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Fátima Rodrigo, Ejercicios de resistencia [Exercises in resistence], 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Fátima Rodrigo, Ejercicios de resistencia [Exercises in resistence], 2024
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  • Detail: Fátima Rodrigo, Contradanza, 2024, blue, silver and golden metallic thread, fabric, beads, sequins, 180 x 180 cm (70 7/8 x 70 7/8 in)
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  • Contrary to textile’s association with women’s work, domesticity and the decorative arts, it has offered contemporary artists from latin America the materials to explore labour in the Global South. For example, Rodrigo’s jewelled work gloves mimic the opulent clothing of colonial monarchs and their representatives, and invoke the global class relations imposed through colonial missions.
     
    Meanwhile, Johanna Unzueta (b. Santiago, 1974) reproduces industrial machinery, tools, pipes and taps in hand-dyed felt, subverting assumptions around textile art. An attentiveness towards the history and origins of her materials, as well as an interest in Chile’s textile industry and questions surrounding labour in the southern hemisphere are amongst her central concerns. On close inspection of her sculptures, the fine quality of the merino felt, the deep richness of the natural dyes and the minute stitches along each seam become evident; the laborious acts and the time involved in creating such seemingly unceremonious objects is time spent considering the unseen labour in modern life. From further away, the sculptures are a series of clean lines – fluid drawings across the walls, a pastiche of minimalist abstraction and modern industrial architecture.
  • Johanna Unzueta, Pipe, 2010 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Johanna Unzueta b. 1974 Axe, 2008 Hand-stitched, hand-dyed felt 70 x 20 x 4 cm 27 1/2 x 7 7/8 x 1 5/8 in (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Johanna Unzueta, Axe, 2008 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Johanna Unzueta, Pipe, 2010 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Johanna Unzueta, Pipe, 2010
  • Sandra Monterroso, Expoliada II, 2016, dyed and colour-fast thread with wood mount, 155 x 143 x 12 cm (61 1/8 x 56 1/4 x 4 3/4 in)
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  • Both Unzueta and Sandra Monterroso (b. Guatemala City, 1974) incorporate Guatemalan indigo dye into their work, made by fermenting the leaves of the indigofera plant and extracting its pigment. The dye, used ritualistically by Mayans to decorate their bodies, was later cultivated and exported by Spanish colonists as a highly valuable commodity. As a material, it is rich in meaning for Monterroso, who explores her mestizo identity throughout her practice, and the way cultural history colours the contemporary.

  • Sandra Monterroso, Decolorando las Hebras, 2011, Video-Performance, duration: 7:28 min
  • Lucía Pizzani (b. Caracas, 1975) explores the interrelationship between narratives of women in history, and processes of metamorphosis in the...
     
    Lucía Pizzani (b. Caracas, 1975) explores the interrelationship between narratives of women in history, and processes of metamorphosis in the natural world. Her Cascaras Lava series, in which the artist is photographed encased inside chrysalis-like fabric sculptures, evoke connotations of transformation and of the invisibility of women in history, calling upon the close interconnection between textiles and women’s work. Removing the textiles from a domestic sphere, she presents this interconnection as a living tradition, reflected in the active volcanic landscape setting.
     
    An incompatibility between tradition and contemporary art is an oxymoron frequently called into question through the continual evolution of textile mediums, reflected in the diverse practices of Latin American artists continually recasting the ancestral textile practices that span the region.
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    List of works: