Tanya Aguiñiga Telar Terrenal / Earthly Loom
Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to present Telar Terrenal / Earthly Loom, a solo exhibition of new textiles by Los Angeles-based artist Tanya Aguiñiga and her first showing with the gallery.
Aguiñiga’s practice is heavily influenced by the traditional crafts of Mexico and pre-Columbian Latin America. Using off-loom weaving techniques, as well as knots, knitting, and crochet, Aguiñiga creates elaborate networks of braided thread, some of which are dyed with a terracotta slurry that hardens like a rigid skin on the surface of the rope. The textiles are arranged in cascading forms that resemble the detritus that accumulates along the banks of the Los Angeles River. Many of the works, in fact, carry stones and sculpted objects, including terracotta hands and organs, among the warp and weft of its weave, a symbolic “catch” that relates the process of weaving to the physical sustenance provided by fishing. The elemental needs of food, clothing, and shelter thus become entry points for thinking about the kinds of practice that might aim at providing a concomitant spiritual nourishment.
Nicole Duennebier (b. 1983, Connecticut) received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Maine College of Art with a major in painting. Her BFA thesis work was most influenced by research into the coastal ecosystems of Maine. In 2006 she was awarded the Monhegan Island Artists Residency. On the island she continued her work with sea life, and perceived a natural connection between the darkness and intricacy of undersea regions and the aesthetic of 16th-century Dutch still-life painting.
In 2008 Duennebier moved to the Boston area, and now lives and works in Malden. She is a 2016 and 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Painting Fellow and her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and New Britain Museum of American Art. Writing about Bright Beast, her 2013 solo show at the Lilypad in Cambridge, Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe said Duennebier’s “technical mastery gives the artist what she needs to seduce the viewer; the content lowers the boom.” Duennebier has also been featured in the Portland Press Herald, Art New England and Hi-Fructose Magazine, among other publications. Duennebier has worked alongside her sister Caitlin Duennebier for a number of collaborative exhibitions, most recently “Love Superior, a Death Supreme” at Simmons University. She was also featured in a solo exhibition, Pushing Painting, at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University.
Recent exhibitions include: FEAST, Nucleus Portland, Portland (2022, solo); Floral Hex, 13FOREST Gallery, Arlington (2021, solo); Sister Season of Sorrow, Satanic Temple Gallery, Salem (2021); Mignon Grotto, Shelter in Place Gallery, Boston (2020, solo); Unmasked: Artful Responses to the Pandemic, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester (2020); Love Superior, A Death Supreme, Simmons College Trustman Gallery, Boston (2019); Enormous Tiny Art Show, Nahcotta Gallery, Portsmouth (2019); Dark VS Light, Gallery 263, Cambridge (2019); and Call of the Wild, 13Forest Gallery, Arlington (2019).