weaving

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares23 Views

    Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

    by

    “Etched in Soil” (2025), part of ‘She Weaves White Gold’ at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. All images courtesy of Malaika Temba, shared with permission

    Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

    November 4, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

    Share

    Pin

    Email

    Bookmark

    “My practice exists in the tension between rest and labor, between the intimacy of touch and the vast systems that shape our world,” says artist Malaika Temba. “Whether I am working on a small weaving or a large-scale installation, I am always asking what materials remember and who gets remembered through them.”

    Merging digital and analog processes, Temba creates layered textile pieces in an exploration of migration, labor, gender, global trade, and daily life. Using a Jacquard loom, she renders tender portraits of people and quotidian urban scenes, from friends seated together to deliveries being made to the hustle and bustle of daily life in the city.

    “Carry Home” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, acrylic paint, and fabric dye, 49 x 64 inches

    Growing up, Temba lived in Saudi Arabia, Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, and the United States. In moving between countries, the Tanzanian-American artist tells Colossal, “I was always struck by how fabric marks culture, and how pattern, texture, and material can tell you where you are by what people wear, how they use cloth, and what materials are available to them—whether found in nature, brought through trade, or produced by industry.”

    In art school, Temba learned to use a Jacquard loom, which enables weavers to create intricate patterns using an automated method. Invented in the early 19th century by Joseph Marie Jacquard, the machines originally used a punch card system. By the 1980s, electronic versions reflected advances in computing, and today, these intricate mechanisms can be programmed to create virtually any design.

    “I learned to use a Jacquard loom and became fascinated by its duality: the loom as one of the oldest forms of human-coded technology and the Jacquard as a machine capable of extraordinary innovation,” Temba says. The method itself parallels the artist’s interest in material and systems. Recently, she has been interested specifically in sisal, a cultivated plant and fiber deeply entwined with labor and trade in Tanzania. Sisal is often used to make durable products like rugs, rope, bags, and more.

    The artist currently has an installation titled She Weaves White Gold on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art, comprising three pieces set against ornate wallpaper. In this work, Temba employs sisal as both the primary material and the concept, as she portrays individuals and communities “carrying stories of work, migration, and endurance across geographies and through systems of production and exchange.”

    “(Aunties Patterned Dresses)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric, 60.5 x 51.5 inches.

    After creating the main textile element, Temba often hand-manipulates the fabric by unravelling areas, adding paint, and silkscreening. These layered elements add to a sense that the work is always in a state of flux—simultaneously constructed and undone. “Over time, these pieces have grown larger, more collaged, and richer in texture, capturing multiple moments within a single woven scene,” she says.

    Temba’s work honors the lives and labor of especially people in East Africa. “With tense elections in Tanzania and the ongoing war in Sudan, I am thinking a lot about visibility, dignity, and what it means to represent ordinary people at a time when their stories are often reduced to headlines or statistics,” she says. “Creating these works is a way of slowing down that narrative, of insisting that daily life—the gestures of care, the rhythm of work, and the persistence of women—has value and deserves to be seen.”

    She Weaves White Gold remains on view through autumn 2026 in Raleigh. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    “Beauty Salon” (2023), Jacquard woven fabric, silkscreen ink, painting, and sewing machine embroidery, 50 x 70 inches

    “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 69 x 51 3/4 inches

    Detail of “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)”

    “Preparing Dinner” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 61 x 52 inches

    “Veggie Market” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 57.5 x 51.75 inches

    “Bismillah Auto Repair” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, chalk, and sewing thread, 60 x 46 inches

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

    Hide advertising

    Save your favorite articles

    Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

    Receive members-only newsletter

    Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

    Join us today!

    $7/month

    $75/year

    Explore membership options

    Previous articleNext article More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares50 Views

      in Art

      Bryana Bibbs On Weaving Through Trauma, Grief, and Loss

      by

      Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art

      Bryana Bibbs On Weaving Through Trauma, Grief, and Loss

      October 27, 2025

      ArtConversationsSocial Issues

      Christopher Jobson

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Feelings of love, loss, and nostalgia are deeply interwoven in the practice of artist Bryana Bibbs. While caring for two simultaneously ailing grandparents in her Chicago home, Bibbs chronicled the periods before and after their deaths in weavings that incorporate objects from their lives. Just as one might pick up a pencil and paper to write through the difficult and overwhelming feelings of losing a loved one, she instead incorporated their clothing and beloved objects into her work, directly confronting the materials that once filled their days by interlacing them with threads and fabrics. Imbued with memories and the catharsis of making, these iterative works became the Journal Series.

      We first contacted Bryana last year about an upcoming exhibition we were working on in Milwaukee that would explore issues surrounding mental health and, more broadly, the wellness of society. In one of our conversations about her work, she mentioned that “no one knows all it takes” to care for loved ones in their final days. The phrase instantly encapsulated our feelings about the show, and No One Knows All It Takes opened late this summer at the Haggerty Museum of Art.

      I spoke again with Bibbs recently to discuss her practice and reflect on a series of exhibitions that have pulled her from Chicago to Milwaukee to Indianapolis.

      This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

      Jobson: Very recently, you’ve been involved with three exhibitions. You had a solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center. You now have a significant amount of work in the show at the Haggerty Museum of Art, and you have work on view with the Lubeznik Center for the Arts. I’m curious, as you were juggling these or approaching these different exhibitions, are they related in some way? Are they separate? How have you approached each one as you’ve been working?

      Bibbs: I think that they’re all related to one another because I feel like the work that I have in each show is very much about the aftermath of my grandparents passing away. The Cultural Center show is so much about the caregiving of my grandparents, and the recent work with the mobile gallery in Indiana, there are two Journal Series works that were from when I was teaching at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. That was such a special time for me because I never thought I would be teaching at such a historical and wonderful place. Being in that setting, all I did was think about my grandparents, and being around the water and reflecting was really helpful for me. And now the work at the Haggerty is basically just the continuation, to me, of the work that was in the Cultural Center.

      Jobson: You’ve spoken a lot about grief and trauma and loss and how it’s present at this time in the majority of your work. Obviously, nobody seeks trauma or grief and loss. But, is there something more to it for you? Are grief and loss something that you are interested in, and that you may continue to explore, or is it more of this is a response to the circumstances of where you’ve found yourself?

      My work has always been a response to what I’ve been going through in my life.Bryana Bibbs

      Bibbs: I think it’s a little bit of both. When I returned to my arts practice in 2019 from working in retail for a long time, I wasn’t making work related to the loss of a loved one. I was making work about mental health and my experience of going through domestic abuse. My work has always been a response to what I’ve been going through in my life. Did I ever think my grandparents would pass away? No, that’s not anything you think about in your day-to-day life. You don’t sit back and go, “this person eventually is never going to be here.” But now that they’re gone, it has unfortunately kind of consumed my brain. Now I’m like, oh, my parents, my dad’s siblings, my cousins, it’s become a reality now. And so because of that, I am interested in grief and trauma and what that means for me and what it also means for other people.

      The way that my mom grieved her parents was so different than the way that I grieved her parents. She kicked into the “only child mode” of having to figure things out and make sure that everything was taken care of when they passed. But for me, I was like, oh my God. We just went through this crazy, traumatic, wild roller coaster for the last two years. And so I was able to sit in my grief a little bit more versus my mom. Whereas now that she’s had a little bit of distance between my grandfather’s passing and my grandmother’s passing, it’s starting to hit her a little bit more. Now she’s realizing she went through so much. So yeah, it’s a little bit of both. It’s about documenting my life but also trying to figure out why I grieve and respond to trauma in the way that I do.

      Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art

      Jobson: What do you do outside of the artwork to create balance in your life? I wonder if, in your case, the work itself is the way that you’re trying to find balance?

      Bibbs: Yeah, I think the work is the balance for me. When I was working on the Journal Series, especially during the time my mom and I were taking care of my grandparents, I found when I was not sleeping well, [or when I would be up] helping my grandfather get to the bathroom and all that, I would pull out and start working on a Journal Series piece. If he needed something, I would go upstairs and help him out, stay up here for a little bit until he was ready to go back to bed. My sleep pattern was so jacked up during that time, but I would just keep working on the series.

      Jobson: Take us back a little bit to when you first started working with fiber. Was it an immediate attraction?

      Bibbs: Fiber, for me, started in undergrad at SAIC. I went into undergrad wanting to do abstract painting specifically, and I didn’t have the best time in that department. When I was picking out my second-year classes, I saw Intro to Fiber was on the list, and my grandfather actually used to quilt with his mother and his grandmother, but he never taught me how to quilt.

      It’s about documenting my life but also trying to figure out why I grieve and respond to trauma in the way that I do.Bryana Bibbs

      Jobson: Your grandfather quilted. That just seems unusual to me?

      Bibbs: It is, yeah! I remember we were in this house, in the room that’s now my studio space, and I asked him, “Did your sisters [quilt] with you?” He said yes, but he hadn’t done it in so long that he forgot the basics to everything.

      In the Intro to Fiber class, that was one of the things they may have been able to teach us, but we didn’t learn that. We learned everything else, like how to knit and crochet. We did a little bit of embroidery, and then we got to floor loom weaving, and I thought I was going to hate it because there’s math involved. The assignment by our professor Jerry Bleem–who I love very much–was to do a 10-by-10-inch square. I remember that repetitive back-and-forth motion with the shuttle—something about it felt very different than painting. Painting feels very quick and sometimes abrupt, especially as an abstract painter.

      Weaving slowed me down in ways that were necessary for me at that time in my life. So I just stuck with it and took probably all of the classes that Jerry taught. I took his Intro to Weaving class, and then his twist class, which teaches you how to apply yarns and spin yarns and all this other stuff. I think that slow processes of weaving and fiber in general clicked for me in some way.

      Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art

      Jobson: Can you tell us about the We Were Never Alone Project?

      Bibbs: That started in 2020. I’m a survivor of domestic violence myself, unfortunately, and I started it right after a few really successful weaving workshops that happened in public settings and institutions. I felt comfortable and confident enough that I would be able to facilitate my own weaving workshops. The first one was at Compound Yellow in Oak Park. It was me and five or six other women. Although I didn’t know who the other participants were prior to doing the workshop, I wanted to create a free, open, weaving workshop where people could get together, and, if they felt comfortable enough, talk about their experiences.

      After hearing how beneficial it was for those attendees, I decided to keep the workshops going, though I haven’t done one since early 2024 because I want to be mentally available for people. [Because of] everything that happened with my grandparents–and recently my dad went through a stroke–I needed to take a moment to reevaluate and find a space that aligns with the project to continue to host those workshops.

      Jobson: Are the workshops instructional? Or does everyone come together and use it as a work, therapy, and sharing period?

      Bibbs: The workshops are about two and a half to three hours long. I tell people why I started the project, my own personal experience, and remind them that they don’t have to share their experience if they don’t want to. They just need to be here and be present in the space with other people who are going through the same thing. I recognize there’s a lot of anxiety and maybe even a little bit of fear. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that, even though they signed up, they weren’t sure if they would come. Some people feel like their experience is not good enough or might be less than other people, which is really hard to hear. So sometimes we sit together and talk about things not related to our experiences. Sometimes we do talk about our experiences, and people ping off of one another and say, “That happened to me, too,” or “Something very similar happened to me.” All of these conversations are happening while they’re weaving.

      The majority of the people who participate are first-time weavers. After I share my experience, I’ll demonstrate with a cardboard loom and explain the materials and how to plain weave. Some people bring found objects and materials that are significant to them, and while they’re weaving, they’re still actively listening to each other, not necessarily staring people in the face, but focused on working. Then they might pause and respond to whatever a person just said, which I think is really lovely.

      Jobson: I was thinking about the act of making while working through trauma or working through whatever issues somebody might bring. Do you think it offers a sense of safety or a sense of comfort, or what do you think the weaving adds to that moment?

      Bibbs: I think it’s the comfort. It goes back to why I enjoy weaving so much: the repetitive nature. You’re doing things with your hands. You’re responding to color in a different way and material in a different way, and it’s tactile. All of those things can be very comfortable for people, and I think it’s what makes the environment successful for people to share and respond.

      Image courtesy of the Haggerty Museum of Art

      Jobson: A newer aspect of your work is printmaking—specifically, pressure printing—which made an appearance at both the Haggerty Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center. Can you talk about the relationship or the juxtaposition of showing these two mediums together?

      Bibbs: Yes, printmaking is super new. A friend of mine who lives in Milwaukee, Linda Marcus, inspired me to visit an open studio at Anchor Press, Paper and Print. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to print. She suggested printing with my own weavings. But, for whatever reason, I thought about printing with my grandfather’s clothing even though I didn’t know if that was possible or not. I visited AP3 with Linda a few weeks before my grandmother passed away. I really enjoyed printmaking, though I had no idea what I was doing, but I enjoyed the idea of taking their clothing and archiving it before me and my mom decided what to do with their belongings. When a loved one passes away, people either give their clothes to friends or family or just donate them. I just want to go through as many of their clothes and try to archive them before that happens.

      Another thing that I really enjoy about it—and very much feels like it relates to my work—is this idea of materiality. I love material. I love working with found objects, and so the fact that I can make prints and give the viewer an idea of what the whole object was before I cut it up or do something with it feels very new and exciting to me.

      Jobson: When you’re working, do certain fibers or colors or textures carry symbolic weight when you’re thinking about memory or absence and that sort of thing?

      Bibbs: I spent a lot of time in my grandparents’ house as a kid, while my parents were working full-time jobs. I was here in the morning and after school, Monday through Friday, and spent a great deal of time in a living room painted “Priscilla pink.” The pink has become this iconic color in our family. I wouldn’t get rid of it anytime soon.

      You mentioned loss and absence—in my recent work that’s going to be in a show at the Indianapolis Art Center, I’ve been thinking about white and blacks and grays, and that has a lot to do with absence and loss. The texture that I tend toward in my large-scale works is an over-spun, coily, twisted texture. It feels very comfortable to me; there’s something very tactile and fluffy in a way I really enjoy. It also references when I was a painter and used thick body mediums and acrylic modeling paste. I loved using all those different forms in painting.

      “Priscilla Made.” Photo by Tonal Simmons, courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center

      Jobson: Specifically with your weavings, is there an internal logic that you use when thinking about scale? A lot of the journal pieces are very small and page-like, but then you also make very large pieces. How do you treat scale when you’re conceiving a piece?

      Bibbs: My most recent show [at the Chicago Cultural Center] is the first time I really thought about architecture. “Priscilla Made” references the seven front room windows of [my grandparents’] house. My piece titled “December182023 & August252024” references the doors to the bedrooms where my grandparents passed. Using those doors as a reference made a lot of sense to me and what I should do with the scale.

      In more recent work, if I’m thinking about a certain story that I want to tell through colors and textures and forms, for whatever reason, I lean towards a 5 and a half to a maybe 7-foot piece. It still feels intimate like the Journal Series pieces do. But they can also feel slightly monumental, and the closer you get to it, there are all these textures, colors, and blends that viewers are sometimes attracted to when they view the pieces. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily get bigger. I like that kind of in-between.

      Jobson: My favorite part of your current work is the fearlessness in incorporating found objects into your weaving–everything from a deck of cards, Disney ephemera, and things discarded in drawers. It seems like you can weave with anything. How do you pick what’s going into a work? And do you find it difficult to incorporate these things?

      Bibbs: The objects I have used so far are from my grandparents. They’re discarded in drawers or cabinets and things like that, and they’re objects that I’ve forgotten about that maybe I used a lot as a kid, a little bit as a teenager, but haven’t used since. The deck of cards, for example, was so significant to me and our family history that it made sense to weave with. The same thing with the basement tile piece that’s in the Haggerty show. Not everyone thinks, “I can weave with a basement tile,” but it just made sense for me to use these materials as a way to mark time. [I want to] highlight my grandparents and their legacy and their story, and preserve their memory and my memories with them.

      Even now, my uncle and two cousins sent me and my mom this beautiful bouquet of flowers marking a year since my grandmother passed away. I’m looking at them now, and they’re beautifully dried up. And, of course, I’m going to save them and weave with them, because it’s sad for me to see dried flowers and realize it’s been well over a year since she’s passed away. The Disney World stuff I used in the Journal Series, a lot of people have shared stories related to those weavings. I’ve heard “Oh, we’ve taken so many family vacations,” or, “Oh yeah, our family would take Disney trips,” and things like that. And I’m always finding new belongings. Actually, this morning, I found a bag of letters that my grandparents sent back and forth to each other in the 1950s.

      Photo by Tonal Simmons, courtesy of the Chicago Cultural Center

      Jobson: Are these … spicy letters?

      Bibbs: I think so! But, I’m not going to read them (laughs). I feel like that’s between them. I read only one of them. My grandmother was sick, and my grandfather said he hoped that she felt better. That’s as much as I need to know because my grandparents were very classy and private people. I always joke with my mom about how my grandmother could have been the queen because of how well she represented herself. And although I’m not going to read all of the letters, I keep thinking I need to do something with them because they feel so important to me.

      Jobson: One last question, what do you have coming up next?

      Bibbs: I have a show at the Indianapolis Art Center that closes December 14. Next, I’ll be doing a family day on November 8 with the Smart Museum for Theaster Gates’ Unto Thee exhibition, which I’m really excited about. And the following weekend, on November 15, I will be facilitating a weaving program for the Haggerty’s Wellness Retreat.

      Find more from Bibbs on her website and Instagram.

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Next article More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Art

      Maria Nepomuceno’s Mixed-Media Sculptures Writhe with Ancient Symbolism

      by

      “Untitled” (2025), ceramics, strings, necklace beads, and wood, 39 3/8 x 34 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, shared with permission

      Maria Nepomuceno’s Mixed-Media Sculptures Writhe with Ancient Symbolism

      August 22, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Through millennia of artistic expression and within the natural world, the ubiquitous spiral continues to mesmerize. In ancient traditions, the form often represents cycles. The triskele, for example, consists of three interlocking spirals thought to symbolize death, life, and rebirth or the triad of mind, body, and spirit. Spirals also emerge naturally in seashells and plants, sometimes linked to the concept of the golden mean, also known as the “divine ratio.”

      For Maria Nepomuceno, the spiral’s occurrence in nature—along with its spiritual significance relating to time and energy in perpetual flow—underpins a vibrant multimedia practice. Her forthcoming exhibition, Cunhó, which opens next month at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, emphasizes abundance. Iconographic references to female anatomy, jars, ceramic vessels, baskets, and seashells—the latter of which are emblematic of fertility and wealth—emphasize flourishing interactions and growth.

      “Abraçaço” (2025), strings, necklace beads, straw, ceramics, resin, and wood, 59 x 50 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches

      A made-up word, Cunhó takes its title from a nickname Nepomuceno’s mother gave to her. Employing traditional Brazilian craftsmanship, the artist creates undulating forms that hang on the wall or nestle into the juncture where perpendicular surfaces meet. Her sculptures are simultaneously soft and firm, meandering and structured. From a distance, they can be alternately read like magnified, amorphous, biological cells or what the gallery describes as vast “macrocosmic landscapes.”

      Whorling beaded and woven forms envelop pearlescent bottle gourds or evoke tropical flowers with prominent stamens. In “Abraçaço,” for example, which in Portuguese means “hug” or “embrace,” a faceless female figure with a serpentine tongue encircles a large white shell and other amorphous shapes with long, slender arms. Other pieces, like “Mar Amor,” evoke an ouroboros, an ancient symbol usually consisting of a snake or dragon eating its own tail, which represents self-creation, interconnection, and eternal cycles.

      Incorporating ceramics, wood, beads, straw, string, and other found materials, Nepomuceno merges the organic and inorganic in shapeshifting pieces that represent a continuous cycle of reproduction, nourishment, plenitude, and care.

      Cunhó runs from September 2 to October 11 in New York City. Explore more by the artist on Instagram.

      Detail of “Abraçaço”

      “Mar Amor” (2025), strings, necklace beads, resin, and wood, 42 1/2 x 41 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches

      “Planta desejo” (2025), wood, straw, necklace beads, resin, string, and ceramic, 74 3/4 x 68 7/8 x 65 inches

      Detail of “Planta desejo”

      “Lingua Espiral” (2025), string, beads, wood, glass, fabric, paint, and ceramics, 59 x 65 x 13 3/4 inches

      “Untitled” (2025), necklace beads, straw, ceramic, and resin, 35 3/8 x 27 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

      “Untitled” (2025), strings, necklace beads, wood, paper, and resin, 51 1/8 x 35 3/8 x 11 3/4 inches

      “Untitled” (2025), braided straw, necklace beads, ceramics, and resin, 55 1/8 x 45 1/4 x 23 5/8 inches

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      In Milwaukee, Four Artists Unravel Trauma to Move Toward Collective Wellness

      by

      Swoon, “Medea” (2017), wood, hand cut paper, laser cut paper, linoleum block print on paper, acrylic gouache, cardboard, lighting elements

      In Milwaukee, Four Artists Unravel Trauma to Move Toward Collective Wellness

      August 21, 2025

      ArtColossalSocial Issues

      Grace Ebert

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      In a world riddled with injustice and predicated on privilege for the few at the expense of the many, what does it mean to be well? An exhibition opening Friday at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee considers the effects of concealed trauma and the inextricable ties between personal health and collective wellness.

      No One Knows All It Takes invites four artists—Bryana Bibbs, Raoul Deal, Maria Gaspar, and Swoon (previously)—who utilize art-making to grapple with complex emotions, imagine solutions to widespread problems, and share their stories and those of others. The timely exhibition, curated by Colossal, brings forth pressing issues like addiction, incarceration, immigration, and a lack of support for caregivers, conveyed through visually arresting works across media.

      Bryana Bibbs, “1.25.24-1.26.24” (2024), handwoven Papa George hospital blanket, Papa George playing cards, gifted pants, 11.5 x 14.5 inches

      No One Knows All It Takes opens with portraits by Deal, intimate renderings made through hours of conversations with the subjects. Paired with his wooden sculptures, the elaborate carvings explore the central role of immigration in American history and culture. Bibbs’ weavings and monotype prints—created while she cared for her dying grandparents with many of their belongings— follow as a sort of ghostly archive of what remains after death.

      Swoon’s “Medea” fills the fourth gallery space, a deeply personal installation that the artist made, in part, to confront her mother’s lifelong struggle with addiction and mental illness. An exposed tarantula mother, portraits of Swoon’s own family, wooden windows, and audio elements layer personal artifacts with recurring motifs about intergenerational trauma.

      The Wisconsin iteration of Gaspar’s Disappearance Jail series tucks into a smaller, more confined space at the end of the exhibition. Featuring images of 113 prisons, jails, and juvenile and immigrant detention facilities throughout the state, the project invites visitors to use hole punches to literally remove and obscure the carceral spaces. Because incarceration has historically been the only manner in which society addresses harm and trauma, Gaspar’s work tasks each person with the abolitionist exercise of imagining other possibilities.

      Raoul Deal, “Trenzas” (2023), woodcut with deckled edge, 28 x 42 inches

      The title, No One Knows All It Takes, came from a conversation with Bibbs, in which she described the emotional, mental, and physical toll of caring for her grandparents in their final months. Referencing the intersecting and multilayered effects of trauma, the phrase is also multivalent: it invokes the immense amount of energy needed to function while ill, the wide-reaching impacts of trauma on an individual’s life, and the social, political, and cultural costs of unaddressed issues.

      No One Knows All It Takes will be on view from August 22 to December 20. The Haggerty Museum of Art is located at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

      Maria Gaspar, Disappearance Jail series (detail), (2021-ongoing), hundreds of perforated archival Inkjet prints on rice paper, 5 x 7 inches each

      Raoul Deal, “Immigration Series #8” (2013), woodcut, 40 x 26 1/4 inches

      Swoon, “Medea” (2017), wood, hand cut paper, laser cut paper, linoleum block print on paper, acrylic gouache, cardboard, lighting elements

      Bryana Bibbs, “12.27.23” (2023), handwoven Papa George casino playing cards, Papa George hospital blanket, 14 x 9.25 inches

      Bryana Bibbs, “8.26.24” (2024), handwoven Papa George athletic tee, Papa George gifted pajama pants, Mema decor flowers, 25 x 9 inches

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Xanthe Summers Weaves Themes of Labor and Visibility in Bold Ceramic Vessels

      by

      “The Weary Weaver” (2024), glazed stoneware, 39.4 x 28.4 x 28.4 incjes. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps. All images courtesy of Xanthe Summers, shared with permission

      Xanthe Summers Weaves Themes of Labor and Visibility in Bold Ceramic Vessels

      August 7, 2025

      ArtCraftSocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      “Clay is an incredible medium to hold narrative,” says Xanthe Summers, who turns to the medium as a way to explore themes around domesticity, craft, and so-called “women’s work” like cleaning, mending, working with textiles, and caregiving. When it comes to clay, she says, “I think mostly I am invigorated by its ability to hold—to hold water, to hold function, to give shape, to carry stories, and to carry meaning.”

      Currently based in London, Summers grew up in Zimbabwe, where she observed inequities within the social structure that mirror many places around the world, especially in terms of gendered labor within the domestic sphere that often goes largely unseen and unacknowledged.

      “Common Threads” (2025), glazed stoneware, 23.6 x 21.7 x 21.7 inches

      She explains that “many homes have cleaners and gardeners who exist within this ‘invisible’ framework: caring for children, cooking their meals, and sometimes traveling for hours—and their work is underpaid, undervalued, and considered unskilled.”

      Summers taps into ceramics, especially the archetypal vessel motif, to join the ever-evolving continuum of the medium. Throughout millennia and across myriad distinct cultures, the earthen material has found endless applications in the home, industry, and art.

      “Clay has the unique ability to cross the boundaries between functionality, art, craft, class, and culture, and because of this, it is a vital medium to hold stories about humankind,” she says. “I understand clay to be an archive for the stories of humans.”

      The vessels often take on figurative proportions, standing tall on plinths and exhibiting saturated hues, bold patterns, and tactile textures. Some of the pieces crumple, especially toward the top, as if hit with something or caving under some invisible weight.

      Installation view at Southern Guild, Cape Town. Photo courtesy of Southern Guild

      The artist’s vessels tread the boundary between form and function and delve into another craft often associated with women’s labor: weaving. She describes how everything from the sheets we sleep on to the carpets we tread across to the clothes on our back can be “extrapolated to speak more broadly about domesticity, women’s work, and racialized spaces in Zimbabwe and the Global South.” She adds:

      Weaving can be used as a wider metaphor for social cohesion—or lack thereof. This predicament is significant in Zimbabwe but is apparent the world over, where women’s work is undervalued.

      Next year, Summers embarks on a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, for a residency at Ceramica Suro, where she will learn from local ceramic artists, glassblowers, and weavers. And this October, you’ll be able to see her work at London’s 1-54, a fair dedicated to contemporary African art, which runs from October 16 to 19. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Woven Tales Stand Tall” (2022). Photo by Deniz Guzel

      Detail of “Woven Tales Stand Tall.” Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” (2025), glazed stoneware, 39.4 x 27.6 x 27.8 inches. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps

      “Working Class Femininity” (2023), glazed stoneware, 41 x 19.8 x 19.8 inches. Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “Weaver’s Woe” (2024,), glazed stoneware, 22.4 x 19.7 x 19.7 inches. Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “Of Woof and Woe” (2024), glazed stoneware, 43.3 x 25.3 x 25.3 inches. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps

      Xanthe Summers in her studio

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Xanthe Somers Weaves Themes of Labor and Visibility in Bold Ceramic Vessels

      by

      “The Weary Weaver” (2024), glazed stoneware, 39.4 x 28.4 x 28.4 incjes. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps. All images courtesy of Xanthe Summers, shared with permission

      Xanthe Somers Weaves Themes of Labor and Visibility in Bold Ceramic Vessels

      August 7, 2025

      ArtCraftSocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      “Clay is an incredible medium to hold narrative,” says Xanthe Somers, who turns to the medium as a way to explore themes around domesticity, craft, and so-called “women’s work” like cleaning, mending, working with textiles, and caregiving. When it comes to clay, she says, “I think mostly I am invigorated by its ability to hold—to hold water, to hold function, to give shape, to carry stories, and to carry meaning.”

      Currently based in London, Somers grew up in Zimbabwe, where she observed inequities within the social structure that mirror many places around the world, especially in terms of gendered labor within the domestic sphere that often goes largely unseen and unacknowledged.

      “Common Threads” (2025), glazed stoneware, 23.6 x 21.7 x 21.7 inches

      She explains that “many homes have cleaners and gardeners who exist within this ‘invisible’ framework: caring for children, cooking their meals, and sometimes traveling for hours—and their work is underpaid, undervalued, and considered unskilled.”

      Somers taps into ceramics, especially the archetypal vessel motif, to join the ever-evolving continuum of the medium. Throughout millennia and across myriad distinct cultures, the earthen material has found endless applications in the home, industry, and art.

      “Clay has the unique ability to cross the boundaries between functionality, art, craft, class, and culture, and because of this, it is a vital medium to hold stories about humankind,” she says. “I understand clay to be an archive for the stories of humans.”

      The vessels often take on figurative proportions, standing tall on plinths and exhibiting saturated hues, bold patterns, and tactile textures. Some of the pieces crumple, especially toward the top, as if hit with something or caving under some invisible weight.

      Installation view at Southern Guild, Cape Town. Photo courtesy of Southern Guild

      The artist’s vessels tread the boundary between form and function and delve into another craft often associated with women’s labor: weaving. She describes how everything from the sheets we sleep on to the carpets we tread across to the clothes on our back can be “extrapolated to speak more broadly about domesticity, women’s work, and racialized spaces in Zimbabwe and the Global South.” She adds:

      Weaving can be used as a wider metaphor for social cohesion—or lack thereof. This predicament is significant in Zimbabwe but is apparent the world over, where women’s work is undervalued.

      Next year, Somers embarks on a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, for a residency at Ceramica Suro, where she will learn from local ceramic artists, glassblowers, and weavers. And this October, you’ll be able to see her work at London’s 1-54, a fair dedicated to contemporary African art, which runs from October 16 to 19. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Woven Tales Stand Tall” (2022). Photo by Deniz Guzel

      Detail of “Woven Tales Stand Tall.” Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” (2025), glazed stoneware, 39.4 x 27.6 x 27.8 inches. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps

      “Working Class Femininity” (2023), glazed stoneware, 41 x 19.8 x 19.8 inches. Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “Weaver’s Woe” (2024,), glazed stoneware, 22.4 x 19.7 x 19.7 inches. Photo by Deniz Guzel

      “Of Woof and Woe” (2024), glazed stoneware, 43.3 x 25.3 x 25.3 inches. Photo by Southern Guild and Hayden Phipps

      Xanthe Summers in her studio

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Art

      Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures

      by

      All images courtesy of Caio Marcolini, shared with permission

      Caio Marcolini Weaves Delicate Metal Mesh into Spawning Cellular Sculptures

      May 9, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Caio Marcolini’s fascination with organic systems began simply enough. It was “the trail left by the sea on the sand, the intertwined roots of trees within the forest, (and) the flowers falling from trees” that he found enchanting. But then, when his first child was born in 2021, he began investigating how these same winding, looping, knotted patterns appeared inside the body.

      What resulted is a series of roving sculptures woven with thin strips of brass, copper, and iron wire. Hollow tubes emerge from delicate bell-like forms secured to a wall, while occasional, long drips drop from the upper area and dangle mid-air.

      Trained as a goldsmith, Marcolini incorporates jewelry-making techniques and industrial design principles into his painstaking, entirely hand-powered process. Using a mallet, dowels, and various manual tools, the Brazilian artist creates a perfectly uniform mesh that he then shapes into supple, rounded forms. “I rarely draw—just small sketches—and most of the time, I imagine a shape using initial parameters,” he says. “The compositions are made in an exploratory way, fluid and organic, as I weave the structure and experiment on the studio wall. I can say it’s a very intuitive process.”

      As the artist sees it, these individual, linked metal pieces are like single cells or DNA that repeat again and again, spawning new forms. While distinct in shape, the sculptures are still malleable, transparent, and abstract. The works resemble the circuitous systems found in the human body, but also the creatures found in forests and oceans, and occupy a sort of ambiguous, hybrid space.

      Marcolini titles his collections with words like colony, system, captured, and bilateral. Referencing the relationship between single components and the larger whole, each body of work becomes a sort of community of organisms that seem to take on a life of their own. Rather than impose a particular interpretation, the artist leaves the exact form of the works open-ended, as if they might morph into new life at any moment.

      Not Every Repetition is a Return, Marcolini’s solo exhibition, is on view through May 23 at Galeria Lica Pedrosa in São Paulo. Find more of his work on his website and Instagram.

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Art

      Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’

      by

      Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers.’ All images courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York, shared with permission

      Ethereal Weavings Merge Architecture and Nature in Élise Peroi’s ‘For Thirsting Flowers’

      May 8, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Imagine standing at a window at dawn as the pale yellow morning light filters through the trees, slowly illuminating flower petals and setting the scene for birdsong. As you move around, the light dapples and changes, and details emerge or disappear around other forms. For Élise Peroi, this sensation provides a starting point for elegant textile sculptures.

      Onto graceful wooden frames, the French artist weaves ethereal, layered screens evocative of dreamy portals to nature. “The luminosity of Peroi’s woven paintings is such that we might feel ourselves carried outside to watch the sky brighten, the air soft against our skin,” says Dr. Rebecca Birrell in an essay accompanying Peroi’s solo exhibition, For Thirsting Flowers, at CARVALHO PARK.

      Detail of “Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches

      The artist taps into the long tradition of European tapestries, which were used for both decoration and to help keep homes and churches insulated. Stitched by hand, the works could reach architectonic proportions and contain highly detailed figurative and narrative scenes. Peroi departs from customary associations with tapestries by removing the pieces from the wall and creating standalone, self-supporting structures.

      She also emphasizes a kind of opening-up of the textile itself. The interactions between warp and weft are loose, delicate, and irregular. And each piece’s depth is determined by the wooden framework, details of which often jut outward in gentle yet willful angles.

      Peroi’s sculptures appear to subtly morph as one walks around, merging internal and external perspectives. The artist explores relationships between emptiness, form, perception, and the built environment, hinting at recognizable shapes like flowers and foliage set against muted diamond-shaped geometric patterns or open spaces in the weave. And the frames serve both as display devices and looms—the process and finished piece merged into one.

      For Thirsting Flowers continues in Brooklyn through May 23. See more on the artist’s website.

      Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York

      “La lune” (2025), silk, silver leaf, gouache, acrylic, and linen, 64 x 55 x 6 inches

      “Pensée I” (2025), painted silk and linen, 36 x 28 x 3 inches

      Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York

      Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York

      “Songes II” (2022), painted silk and linen, 55 x 78 x 6 inches

      Detail of “Songes II”

      Installation view of ‘For Thirsting Flowers’ at CARVALHO PARK, New York

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Art

      Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities

      by

      “Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 50 x 14 x 14 inches. All images © Sarah Zapata, courtesy of the artist, Kasmin, and Sargent’s Daughters, shared with permission

      Architectural Textiles by Sarah Zapata Explore Material Culture and Intersecting Identities

      May 1, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      In vibrant patchworks of woven patterns and fuzzy fiber ends, Sarah Zapata’s sculptures (previously) emerge as wall-hung tapestries, standalone pieces, and forest-like installations. Through the convergence of architectural structures, soft textiles, and myriad patterns and textures, her site-specific works examine the nature of layered identities shaped by her Peruvian heritage, queerness, her Evangelical upbringing in South Texas, and her current home in New York.

      Zapata balances time-honored craft practices with contemporary applications, highlighting the significance of Indigenous Peruvian weaving, for example, as a means of communication. Symbols and patterns composed into cloth traditionally provided a means of sharing knowledge and cosmological beliefs.

      Installation view of ‘Beneath the Breath of the Sun’ (2024) at ASU Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona. Commissioned by CALA Alliance

      In abstract sculptures that often merge with their surroundings, Zapata incorporates unexpected and vibrant color combinations with woven fabrics and tufted textures. Resisting easy categorization, her pieces are neither functional nor purely decorative, although they play with facets of both.

      Zapata consciously holds back from creating work that is too “beautiful,” inviting a remarkable, tactile exploration of relationships between craft, lineage, community, and memory.

      Some of the works shown here are included in Support Structures at Sargent’s Daughters, which continues through through May 3. Find more on Zapata’s website and Instagram.

      “How often they move between the planets” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches

      Detail of “How often they move between the planets”

      “Part of the tension (from earthen pits) I” (2024), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, and hand coiled rope, 49 x 14 x 14 inches

      Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni

      “Towards and ominous time III” (2022), handwoven cloth, natural and synthetic fiber, 144 x 60 inches

      Installation view of ‘To strange ground and high places,’ Galleria Poggiali, Milan. Photo by Michele Alberto Sereni

      Detail of “Part of the tension (from earthen pits) II”

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Next article More