Erin M. Riley, an artist out of Philadelphia, is urging you to really rethink your notion of weaving and looming by transforming it from traditional to anything but. Read Eva Glettner's interview withthe articst from our archives by clicking above.

The post Erin M. Riley’s Weaves Unlikely Moments first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The economy of Peru’s Sacred Valley has long been entwined with the seasons. Rural communities typically grow crops and raise livestock to sustain themselves and to barter with others, a process that necessitates an attunement with nature, its cycles, and how these patterns influence self-sufficiency.

This is particularly true for the Quechua communities, Indigenous peoples who have long worked for subsistence rather than state currencies. In recent years, health clinics, schools, markets, and transportation requiring residents to use cash have slowly eroded this way of life. Today, many Quechua men leave their communities to work in tourism, which offers an income and the opportunity to learn Spanish. Conversely, women often remain at home to care for children and farms, making them dependent on support from their partners and family members.

In 2009, the nonprofit Awamaki formed to aid communities around Ollantaytambo, Cusco, as they navigated this change. U.S.-based Kennedy Leavens and Miguel Galdo, of Peru, had worked together previously at a similar organization supporting 10 women weavers from Patacancha. When that project shuddered, the two decided to found Awamaki to maintain their support.

The nonprofit grew quickly, and today, it assists nine cooperatives, comprising 174 artisans and community members who work across craft and tourism. With collaboration at its core, Awamaki prides itself on sustainability and focuses on broadening its partners’ access to a diverse array of markets and economic opportunities.

In addition to financial changes, the climate crisis is rapidly transforming the ways of the Sacred Valley, which faces disproportionate impacts as glaciers melt and the water supply dwindles. “The shift towards having personal income, for our artisan partners, is not about replacing traditional livelihoods, but about widening the economic ground beneath them so they can move their families towards prosperity and build resiliency to the effects of climate change, all without leaving the community or traditional ways of life,” the nonprofit tells us.

Partnering with Awamaki allows cooperative members to focus on traditional spinning, dyeing, and weaving traditions, while the nonprofit offers structural support in selling their goods and coordinating tourism. Carving through the terrain north of Cusco, the Andean highlands were once home to the Incans and still hold traces of the ancient empire, like the historic city of Machu Picchu, which continues to attract around one million people from around the globe each year. For many years, the organization says, visitors would arrive in villages without prior notice, and the women would halt their work to meet tourists and hopefully, sell a piece.

And of course, this way of making is demanding, as women not only weave, but also raise alpacas, shear their wool, and spin and dye the soft fibers into yarn. “Before weaving, I have to wash my hands carefully so the wool doesn’t get damaged. It requires attention and care,” Ricardina, an Awamaki member from the Cusci Qoyllur cooperative, tells us. “Sometimes I can weave more, sometimes less. It depends on time, on my children, on everything else I have to do.”

Today, Awamaki helps to coordinate tourism and provide compensation for visits. This includes programs like Murmur Ring’s immersion, which will bring a group of creatives to the region this June. “Our role is to create opportunities that can be compatible with cultural continuity, if that is what communities themselves want,” they say, adding:

For women, without personal income, everyday decisions can feel distant. Paying for school supplies, buying medicine, covering transportation costs, buying food to supplement the limited traditional crops that grow at high altitude–all of these depend on uncertain flows of money and shifting household dynamics. As climate patterns grow more erratic, with harsher frosts, longer dry spells, and thinning pasture, even the agricultural base families rely on has become less predictable, deepening that sense of financial fragility.

This regular support has simultaneously buoyed many women to greater financial independence and helped retain their way of life. “When new artisans join a cooperative, they are typically mentored by other women in their own community. Cultural knowledge remains community-held and community-led,” the nonprofit shares.

“In my family, we make decisions together—about how to earn and how to move forward,” Daniela, a weaver from the Puskariy Tika cooperative, says. “Through this work, we are able to keep going and improve our lives little by little.”

Nadia, of the Rumia cooperative, echoes this sentiment. “Being part of Awamaki changed things for us. Now we have a steady income, and that allows us to keep weaving,” she says. “In our community, it’s not always easy. Some people say, ‘Why do you weave?’ But they don’t understand this work… We also teach our children to care for the environment, to grow things, to respect the land. That’s part of our work, too.”

To learn more about the women and support their work, visit Awamaki’s website.

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Toronto-based Kurdish artist Roda Medhat pushes the boundaries of fabric into the realm of sculpture, exploring the ways in which traditional West Asian textiles can be translated into various media. As digital fabrication and 3D scanning cross paths with memory and material, Medhat’s practice asks “how we carry our stories, and what happens when those stories are translated into new, synthetic languages?”

The artist’s new solo exhibition, titled From the Loom, fills Toronto’s Abbozzo Gallery with large-scale sculptures in conversation with a new series of textile works. Known in part for his neon installations, the artist also presents several glowing light-based works encased within glass or acrylic, redolent of patterned Kurdish rugs.

Several of Medhat’s images and symbols—most prominently young boys riding horses and interacting with nature—are sourced from Kurdish children’s books. These icons are woven directly into the surface of each textile by way of an electronic Jacquard machine, further accentuating the contrast between preserved cultural objects and contemporary reconstruction. In the exhibition’s statement, Medhat shares that his work “functions as a distillation of a wider body of research,” including the contemporary subversion of archival materials.

“The Sheep and the Chevrolet,” an anchoring work within the exhibition, reimagines François Balsan’s problematic 1947 ethnographic work of the same title. Pitting bucolic Kurdish life with Western modernism, Balsan’s off-key travelogue presented a stereotypical, highly subjective view of Kurdish culture. Medhat’s bold sculpture invokes 3D printing to construct a monumental sheep composedly sitting atop a small Chevrolet vehicle, offering a playful point of reconceptualization.

From the Loom is on view through May 26. You can find more from the artist on Instagram.

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Silk has been crafted in Vietnam for centuries, where it’s treasured as a lightweight, luxurious fabric used in traditional garments and art. For Kenny Nguyen, who was born in Ben Tre Province and is currently based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the material provides the foundation for vibrant, large-scale wall works that combine elements of weaving and tapestries, garment production, painting, and sculpture.

Using thousands of hand-cut strips of silk, Nguyen draws on his background in fashion design, employing techniques such as pinning, weaving, sewing, and layering to create what he describes as “deconstructed paintings.” Each work is created around a kind of imaginary body, its creases and undulating forms evoking movement and versatility.

Even though the works appear fixed, they are actually very malleable. Every time a piece is installed, its undulations are determined by where the pins are placed, and it assumes something of a new version. This complements Nguyen’s approach to silk as a kind of “second skin,” he says, which adapts to its environment, represents memories and heritage, and serves as a metaphor for his personal identity.

Nguyen’s work is currently on view in Textile Art Redefined at Saatchi Gallery in London and Earth to Sky at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Singapore. His work will also be included in the exhibition Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses at the Brooklyn Museum, which opens on May 16, and a forthcoming group exhibition at Sundaram Tagore’s London location. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Milan-based Filipina designer Mirei Monticelli creates biomorphic lighting fixtures that toe the line between sculpture and utility. Undulating outward and glowing from within, the artist’s works feel as if they are alive, quietly dancing wherever they stand or hang.

These gestural, biodegradable structures are crafted with hand-woven Banaca fabric made from Abacá, a fiber that grows abundantly in Monticelli’s native Philippines. The artist’s studio works directly with a community of weavers in the Bicol province at the southeastern end of Luzon, sharing with Colossal, “We’ve developed the material together over time, so it’s not just sourcing, but a relationship.”

The laborious act of harvesting Abacá fiber has long been communal. From gathering the wild plant’s towering stalks and stripping them layer by layer to sun-drying bundles of knotted thread and hand-weaving the strands into functional textiles, the necessity of human connection has always been part of the process.

The term Banaca—coined by Monticelli—combines modern elements of design with a heritage technique that has been passed down for centuries. Monticelli’s contemporary subversion of a material so deeply engrained within Philippine culture further emphasizes the works’ metamorphic and dynamic presence. “Human rhythm is what gives the material its character, and it’s also why every piece feels alive when it’s lit,” says the artist.

Monticelli’s practice also incoporates techniques that echo garment construction and fashion. The artist shared that many of her methods are also learned from her mother, a fashion designer. Draping, volume-building, and creating shape are present in Monticelli’s lamps, underscoring a bodily essence within their surging forms.

Last month, the artist unveiled an installation titled “Pleasure Garden” at Milan Design Week, and often collaborates with interior designers, hospitality partners, and architectural studios to create immersive spaces. Find more from Monticelli on Instagram.

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When we think of terms like “flowing” or “fluid,” we could be referring to the nature of water, but we can also just as easily apply these concepts to our understanding of art and craft. Fabrics “pool” and different mediums converge. The nature of creativity is often referred to in terms of an “ebb and flow.” Ecologically speaking, bodies of water are metaphorically woven into the fabric of our planet. Rivers and lakes sustain an abundance of life, shape cultures, and course through history. Amid the ongoing climate crisis, how do artists express concerns about water and the environment?

Water | Craft, a group exhibition at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, dives into this question. The museum itself is situated on the banks of the Mississippi River and often directly engages with its expansive biological and cultural reach. Works by seven artists, whose practices incorporate weaving, pottery, basketry, glass, and textile arts, directly interface with contemporary issues of water access and cultural preservation amid climate change.

Colossal readers may be familiar with the mixed-media pieces of Tali Weinberg and Nicole McLaughlin, both of whom combine quantities of colorful thread with other materials in meditations on interconnectivity and multi-disciplinarity. Weinberg translates ecological data into tendril-like installations and abstract weavings, such as a series of three pieces from her Climate Datascapes series that visualize information about silt in the Upper Mississippi River. McLaughlin’s dramatically fringed ceramic platters reference Pre-Columbian cultures and the continuum of human history and time.

Water | Craft also includes works by Rowland Ricketts, Sarah Sense, Therman Statom, Kelly Church, and Tanya Aguiñiga. The latter is known for her intricately knotted wall works containing terracotta forms, which cascade gently to the floor. And Ricketts’ large-scale installation, “Bow,” comprises strands of indigo-dyed linen that suspend within a large gallery space, creating the effect of a current or perhaps the silhouette of a boat.

“Just as water flows through bodies, landscapes, and cultural histories, craft knowledge is passed between generations, carrying technical skills alongside cultural values,” the museum says. “The artists in Water | Craft employ traditional methods not as nostalgic gestures, but as living practices that continue to evolve in response to environmental change.”

Water | Craft continues through December 27 in Winona.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Along the Mississippi River, ‘Water | Craft’ Is a Confluence of Art, Culture, and Ecology appeared first on Colossal.