Fairs
ABU DHABI ART, UAE, 2023
Praxis presents: Josefina Concha E.
Date and place
Place: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Start Date: November 21 2023
End Date: November 26 2023
Description
Abu Dhabi Art 2023 | Booth AS1
Praxis is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chilean artist Josefina Concha E. (1985) at Abu Dhabi Art 2023.
Josefina Concha E.’s handmade textiles seem to transcend the ordinary as they hang from the ceiling or adorn the walls of the Praxis booth. The artist masterfully imbues her textiles with an ethereal quality, evoking a sense of weightlessness and a connection to the organic world. Using a vivid range of threads and the meticulous zigzag stitching of a sewing machine, she creates irregular weavings that redefine the boundaries of painting, craft design and sculptural tapestries.
Despite her dedication to the “traditional” realm of female textile work, Josefina Concha E. identifies herself as a painter and a dreamer. Whether working in her Santiago studio or finding inspiration in Chilean nature, she brings her creations to life by fusing dense weavings, instinct, drawings, Polaroids, memories and yarns.
Her work is deeply inspired by the natural world, the human form and the intriguing intersections between the two. She discerns new visual avenues in the textures of skin, hair, plants and animals, which she translates into her intricately woven yarns. Embracing the inherent imperfections of weaving, a hallmark of handmade craftsmanship, Concha E.’s creations seek to harmonize order and beauty. Often manifesting themselves in spiral forms and endless lines, her weavings seem to have been born organically from a sewing machine, capable of infinite growth, a journey with a beginning but no end.
Through the act of weaving, she opens up the possibility of creating a painting without paint or traditional brushes, echoing the rich textile traditions maintained by Latin American women for centuries. Her work reflects a deep communion with the art of craftsmanship and the wonders of nature, revealing a multitude of patterns and symbols intrinsic to the heritage of her continent. For Josefina Concha E., weaving is a hypnotic and contemplative process that demands her full presence, with body and mind in harmony. Like tending a garden, it is a meticulous labor that admits no rush and offers a deep stillness to the spirit, similar to a meditative mantra.
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Artist Josefina Concha E. (1985, Santiago de Chile) is a master of textile art who rescues centuries of Latin American heritage through a communion with craftsmanship and nature. Using elements such as skin, hair, plants and animals as initial inspiration, she has found in the thousands of layers of woven thread the possibility of painting and drawing without relying on those means, and echoing instead a tradition that has been passed down through generations of women. Nature is her main source of inspiration, its resemblance to the human body, the exuberance of color and form, the vulnerability of living matter, the visual and symbolic richness of the elements, these are the themes that inspire her work.
Her pieces are ethereal fabrics, complex but harmonious, often reflections of the feminine being, spiral forms that are born naturally from the sewing machine, which contain within themselves the power to continue to grow permanently: they have a beginning, but no end. The almost mesmerizing process of meticulously covering the fabric with thread is for the artist a way of being fully present, body and mind in tune. Like cultivating a garden, it is a labor that should not be rushed, that requires a method and can provide stillness to the spirit, in the manner of a mantra.
Josefina’s work longs for order, for harmony. The imperfections of manual labor that are meekly accepted, and the perpetual rebirth inherent in the spiral, are the means that allow the artist to enter the paths of the mind and this search for beauty.