Artist Statement

“Whoever said money can't solve your problems
Must not have had enough money to solve 'em.”

-Ariana Grande, “7 rings”, Thank U, Next

My creative research, considers the dialectical relationship in which the hand and machine are portrayed as discordant instruments.

Architecture, interior decor, and fashion influence our psychology, our identity, and our cultural values. My creative projects in weaving features architecture décor and fashion with symbolic flowers, laurels, and cornucopias, illustrative motifs that culturally represent wealth, prestige, and power.

I hand weave on a Thread Controller 2 (TC2) digital Jacquard loom, which uses the binary system principle to all woven structures and digital images. I weave in a banner scale that relates to both human scale and architecture, interfacing and obstructing one another.

Weave structures are designed to visually constitute a digital image that manipulates and repeats. I erode the soft and patterned surface of cloth, the digital image, and architecture, marking with materials often used to clean and preserve or destroy and vandalize the surface of architecture and cloth. The structure of the weave and its drape influences how paint, ink, bleach, and dye mark the surface.

I mirror, repeat, reverse, and flip weave patterns. Considering the intrinsic difference between haute couture and mass-produced ready-to-wear fashion, I utilize tapestry techniques, and hand finishing techniques including knotting and macramé.

Works in this creative project sparkle from metal and plastic tinsels, implying that all that glitters is gold. I take freely and reflect on the symbolism of high-end fashion houses. The symbols, repeat patterns, and material inclusions may look familiar; crafted like haute couture fashion, this work is not a knockoff.

In Andrew Bolton’s exhibition essay Manis – Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology , he describes how, “The practice and stature of haute couture was sustained by hand skills that spoke of mastery, subtlety, etiquette, and refinement… the intrinsic difference between haute couture and mass-produced ready-to-wear fashion has always been between the custom made and the ready-made. Traditionally, the hand had been identified with exclusivity, spontaneity, and individuality. Yet, alternatively as representative of elitism, the cult of personality, and a detrimental nostalgia for past craftspersonship. Similarly, the machine has been understood to signify progress, democracy, and mass production but also inferiority, dehumanization, and homogenization.”

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, a British Nigerian artist whose work explores personal themes of leisure, excess, mortality, vanity, and physical disability asserts, “Power creates excess,” while admitting, “I also, actually would like to have the trappings of wealth myself even though I may be criticizing it.” I relate to Shonibare; it feels shameful, my critique also exposes my desires. Also, billionaire corporate global conglomerates are soulless monocultures, and why do I desire that life? Perhaps because it feels like escapism, and because I am skilled and capable in weaving and sewing techniques that have lost most of its perceived value because of the contemporary global fashion industry.

“Ariana Grande - 7 Rings (Official Video),” YouTube, January 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYh6mYIJG2Y.
Andrew Bolton and Nicholas Alan Cope, Manus X Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016).
“Yinka Shonibare CBE RA In,” Art21, accessed May 1, 2023, https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s5/yinka-shonibare-cbe-in-transformation-segment/.