ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Mestiza hybrid identities, as Gloria Anzaldúa argues, are multilayered. They stretch in all directions, from past to present, vertically and horizontally, chronologically, and spatially. Inspired by this premise, the artists in this exhibition use textiles and threads symbolically and metaphorically referencing ties to ancestral traditions while highlighting transformation as diasporic subjects. Their multidimensional identities are complex as they search for ancestral knowledge and tradition, guiding their artistic journeys. They are rooted, blended, and dyed, they are flexible and multifaceted. This exhibition aims to explore parallel frameworks between the art produced by these women textile artists and the mestiza female body which endures the complexity of racial and patriarchal oppression, forms of invisibility and exclusion, and an imposed coloniality which shapes their position and condition in Canada.

The common thread that ties the artists Claudia Gutiérrez, Ruth Mora Izturriaga, Ixchel Suarez, and Sarabeth Triviño together is their ability to transmit meaning behind the slow-paced methodology of working with textiles, as a space for personal meditation, sharing of traditional knowledge, and the experience of collective healing. They use the act of weaving, stitching, and embroidering, while speaking to contemporary concerns. They expose truth behind pain and failure, offering gestures and the meditative nature of textile work as resistance to the accelerated rhythm of today’s violent world.

Safeguarding, storytelling, and healing are indicative of the resiliency that lies behind the messages of sisterhood and motherhood, ecological protection, and kinship. The artists in this exhibition form alliances through and with the female brown body while their meditative thread work become a source of strength and rootedness.

Curated by Tamara Toledo.

LOCATION

Sur Gallery Exhibition: 39 Queens Quay East, Suite 100

Gallery Hours (during exhibition):

Wednesday - Friday noon-6:00PM

Sat 11 AM-5 PM