https://www.artforum.com/picks/curriculum-spaces-of-learning-and-unlearning-78807 March 1, 2019

NEW YORK

“CURRICULUM: spaces of learning and unlearning” ​ EFA Project Space 323 West 39th Street 2nd Floor January 16-March 16

Sarah Zapata, To Teach or Assume Authority, ​ ​ 2018–19, natural and synthetic fibers, pine, dimensions variable.

Self-care is not what it used to be. Before it was a neoliberal mantra, it was a demand—for the recuperative space and time necessary for the reclamation of those subjectivities that have historically been erased. Mining affects such as color, atmosphere, and ritual, the works in “CURRICULUM: spaces of learning and unlearning” offer alternative networks of care and collectivity in response to, and in place of, institutions.

Christen Clifford’s sculpture WE ARE ALL PINK INSIDE: Interiors, 2018, resembles a halved tent. Its ​ ​ ​ soft-pink video projections of corporeal interiors and smooth surfaces offer fleeting respite. Those who crawl inside might feel momentarily secure, but they remain exposed—to the rest of the gallery, yes, but also to themselves, as their reflections are distorted in the work’s Plexiglas sheets. Sarah Zapata’s ​ ​ shaggy, handwoven monument, To Teach or Assume Authority, 2018–19, looks like an edifice overtaken ​ ​ by Technicolor moss. It invokes ancient Peruvian ceremonial architecture and engages with ideas surrounding collective making, feminized labor, and precolonial spirituality.

Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo’s Altar Objects, 2017, an arrangement of items including candles, dice, and ​ ​ ​ a stack of manifestos, is a shrine to the joy and salubriousness of the color yellow, which, for the artist, also conjures a brightness capable of blotting out the murkier aspects of structural violence. In her photograph Storyteller 2, 2017—which hangs above the sulfur-hued sanctum like a religious icon—a ​ ​ person cradles an image of figures draped in gold, embracing one another. These layers of enfolded bodies, linked by touch and lemony hues, represent a psychic and iconographic system of support and comfort. With Hormonal Fog, 2016–18, a sculpture that diffuses testosterone-suppressing botanicals in ​ ​ a heady cloud, Candice Lin and Patrick Staff seek to alter our bodies at the molecular level. For the ​ ​ ​ ​ artists in this exhibition, learning must necessarily be transgressive, haptic, porous, and intimate.

—Sophia Larigakis ​

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https://hyperallergic.com/486865/art-movements-294/ February 28, 2019

News - Art Movements “Serwan Baran will represent Iraq at the Venice Biennale, Naima J. Keith will take on a new role at LACMA, and more.”

Jasmine Weber

[...]

Knockdown Center in New York has announced that Sarah Zapata, ray ferreira, Yanira Castro, and ​ ​ Shawné Michaelain Holloway are the curators of its Spring 2019 season of Sunday Service, a monthly series of live work. [via email announcement]

About Sunday Service Taking place the first Sunday of each month, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of cross-disciplinary performances and presentations that brings together a multiplicity of views around a singular prompt, such as a question, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service centers works in progress, interdisciplinary endeavors, and diversity in format showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster the exploration of ideas and critical discourse amongst peers. https://knockdown.center/event/sunday-service-spring-2019-season/

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https://nylon.com/consciousness-raising-new-museum-review December 5, 2018

What It Looks Like When Queer Artists Memorialize Stonewall “Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project” is on view at NYCs New Museum CASSIDY DAWN GRAVES

Though it’s one of the most recognizable moments in LGBTQ history, the 1969 riots at New York City’s Stonewall Inn tend to be remembered differently by different people. For some, Stonewall is known primarily as an important gay bar in New York City’s West Village, for others, it’s a site of anti-establishment resistance spearheaded by trans women of color who remain overlooked. Then there’s Stonewall, the 2015 film panned by critics and activists alike for its whitewashed version of ​ ​ ​ ​ history.

But, what if the site and events were memorialized in a different way? Say, by being honored with a huge T-shirt launcher? Or, celebrated with a series of relaxing chairs? These kinds of creations are exactly what happened when Chris E. Vargas, founder of the “semi-fictional, transient” Museum of Trans Hirstory and Art (MOTHA), asked artists for their own Stonewall monuments in a current exhibition at New Museum in New York City.

Although President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall Inn and its neighboring Christopher Park as ​ ​ a national monument in 2016—making it the first to be centered around the LGBTQ community—Vargas finds this commemoration insufficient; MOTHA seeks to provide the trans community with “a gender-neutral hirstory all their own,” so it’s only natural he’d ask the queer community to take honoring Stonewall out of the government’s hands and into their own.

“Depending on who you are, your relationship to the events at Stonewall and that history is very different. So a multi-generational group of artists felt really important,” Vargas tells NYLON. This project is also different from his prior ventures at MOTHA in that it includes a wider range of artists across the sexuality and gender spectrums.

“There’s been a lot of work to kind of displace that one narrative that’s very white and cisgender-focused, pointing to the trans women of color who were instrumental to the riots. But it’s also important to not overlook all the people who have stakes in this history as well. [The exhibit is] very trans-focused, but it’s not only trans artists,” he explains.

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Photo by Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio

Vargas’ diverse team expands what the very definition of “monument” can mean. There’s somewhat traditional options, like Sarah Zapata’s large sculptures of feet, as well as those that are more avant-garde, such as Catherine Lord’s Plexiglas tube filled with used shirts bearing activist symbols and “lesbian sweat, lesbian blood, lesbian thought,” paying tribute to “another figure absent in the march of history.”

Photo by Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio

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Some offer a multimedia element: Keijuan Thomas’s wooden raft connected by hair beads, “like the kind [her] momma used to use,” is accompanied by a poetic proposal and spoken word audio track. “I felt the weight of a history so heavy/ It moved me to keep moving, to keep,” she proclaims.

Almost all the works were created specifically for the show, but one is an actual relic of history. Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, a veteran of the Stonewall riots, contributed two sculptures from 1969 (one of which was remade for this exhibit), as well as a handwritten piece from 1989.

“This wasn’t just another battle … Our Mother Stonewall was giving birth to a new ERA and we were all the midwives,” he wrote.

Photo by Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio

Devin N. Morris proposed a practical collection of chairs and lounges to be scattered throughout Christopher Park. Inspired by the phrase “a seat at the table,” they’re named for black trans leaders like Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major.

“I wanted to provoke a feeling of belonging or a desire to stay in a certain space,” Morris explains. “I designed chairs that could satisfy many different needs for rest, especially in a now-disparate location in lower Manhattan that doesn’t represent a safe space for queer or trans bodies of color.”

These monuments currently only exist as written proposals, sketches, and small, low-budget models placed in a miniature Christopher Park on the fifth floor of a New York City museum. “I feel like it’s very much in the Zeitgeist, this conversation about what history gets monumentalized,” Vargas explains, “so it was sort of a funny thing to really not embrace that style of doing things, and instead embrace a very strange mid-size, miniature scale to talk about this history.”

Some artists did articulate desires to make their work large-scale. Nicki Green, who proposed a pile of “Stonewall-brand” bricks to acknowledge both the object’s role in the riots and the word’s slang meaning as “a trans woman who does not pass as a cis woman,” said “I would be so excited to design and produce full-scale bricks and install them impermanently, as I think a monument that is a constantly shifting form would truly activate the work in a way the [model] couldn’t.”

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Photo by Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio

Jibz Cameron, who performs under the name Dynasty Handbag and proposed a series of cartoon illustrations such as “the Stonewall Inn’s overflowing toilet (as described by a frequenter of the bar)” and a “stiletto heel being slammed into the eye of a cop,” said, given the resources, they “would create an enormous statue of a tattered spiked heel that shot flames into the air and blasted an air horn whenever anyone got close to it.”

Art isn’t the only component; an adjoining room presents political literature and tangible ways for one to make a difference, such as working with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which provides “free, quality, ​ ​ respectful, affirming legal services for low-income transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming people.” While this room was required due to the exhibition’s place in the museum’s Department of Education and Public Engagement program, Vargas says it also helps remind people that more vulnerable members of the LGBT community, like trans women of color, still face a lot of the same oppression today those at Stonewall did in 1969.

“Making this history concrete and creating monuments around Stonewall is to create this safe distance,” Vargas says. “There’s this illusion that we’ve solved the problems, so it felt like a way to point to the fact that that’s not true for a lot of people in our community.”

MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas’ ”Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project″ is on ​ ​ ​ view through February 3 at New Museum in New York City.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-peruvian-american-artist-weaving-vibrant-artworks-explore- craft-sexuality June 5, 2018

The Peruvian-American Artist Weaving Vibrant Artworks That Explore Craft and Sexuality

Eli Hill

Installation view of Sarah Zapata, “If I Could,” at Deli Gallery, New York, 2018.

“Our current administration is performing masculinity so horribly,” Sarah Zapata tells Artsy. “I feel like it’s ​ ​ our duty as queer people, as lesbians, to fuck that up.” As Zapata expresses her frustrations with our current political moment, she runs her hand over a 5-foot-tall knit sock, situated in the middle of her Brooklyn studio. She goes on to explain that the garment was constructed to house her body––or, rather, the body of her drag king persona, Jesus Zapato.

The 29-year-old artist regularly hosts drag king nights, where participants take on a masculine persona, just as drag queens perform femininity. For Zapata’s drag king shows—titled “Nightwood,” after the celebrated novel by Djuna Barnes—she invites fellow artists to perform, but never specifies what style of drag or masculinity she is looking for. The result is a public space for participants to experiment and play; at the most recent iteration, Jesus performed a dance while inside of the aforementioned enormous sock.

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Installation view of Sarah Zapata, A little domestic waste I, at ​ ​ Deli Gallery, New York, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Deli ​ ​ Gallery, NY.

Detail of Sarah Zapata, A little domestic waste I, at Deli Gallery, ​ ​ New York, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Deli Gallery, NY. ​

The artist’s urge to elaborate on identity extends into the everyday of her studio, where she crafts fiber art pieces that are as intersectional as herself. While Zapata’s extended family is split between Peru and the United States, she was born and raised in Texas, where she often felt isolated from her Peruvian heritage. In response, Zapata began learning traditional craft skills that she still employs in her work today. To create her lively, shaggy, and colorfully loud sculptures, she combines Peruvian weaving techniques and American rug-making traditions. The resulting cross-cultural objects become a way to connect her body to the craftworks women have been performing in Peru for hundreds of years.

For her first solo show with Deli Gallery in March 2017, Zapata titled the exhibition after Simon and Garfunkel’s 1970 hit “If I Could (El Condor Pasa),” which samples a Peruvian piece of music. The conversation between Peruvian and American culture attracted the artist to the song, as well as the title’s nod to self-reproach. “There’s all these verses in Psalms talking about the ‘good woman’ and how she works with wool and performs honest labor,” Zapata says, rolling her eyes.

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“I’m originally from Texas and was born into a very strict evangelical Christian household, so being a lesbian, I just have a lot of guilt.”

Plenty of honest labor is embedded in each of her works––whether Zapata is coiling yarn (a technique in which you continuously wrap fibers around each other) or weaving threads on a loom. Though her art is not conceptually dependent upon how long she spends making it, labor is an invaluable currency for Zapata.

Left to right: Installation view of Sarah Zapata, A little domestic waste III and A little ​ ​ ​ domestic waste IV, at Deli Gallery, New ​ York, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Deli Gallery.

“I think in the end, the labor goes back to guilt,” she says. “I feel like I have to push myself to these really insane limits in order to really feel like I earned it.” That hard work undoubtedly pays off, culminating in an alluring excess of textures, shapes, and colors. In one work, A little domestic ​ waste I (2017), a 3-foot-tall form sits in a small coiled basket. Rising out of the green container, ​ the curvaceous artwork is a spectacle, with a piece of long blonde hair emerging from the yarn’s extravagant display of color. Looking at the shaggy sculpture, it’s hard to resist running one’s fingers through the fibrous features.

For “Haptic Tactics,” a recent exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, Zapata recreated her encompassing installation on a smaller scale. Tucked into the corner of the exhibition, a brightly hued panel extended off the wall and onto the floor, with a shaggy sculpture placed in the middle. And on the wall, a sign requested visitors to remove their shoes and socks before entering the installation. Going barefoot in a public place may make some viewers uneasy or slightly embarrassed, but this is just the experience Zapata hopes to spark in her viewer––a moment of humility and intimacy.

Installation view of Sarah Zapata, If I Could (reprise), at ​ ​ Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Coiled vessels often act as the bases for the artist’s mixed-media figures; she explains that they’re inspired by a burial practice used in the Paracas civilization, a pre-Columbian Peruvian community. “They first put the body into a natal position, then they would put them into a funerary

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basket in order to embody this idea of leaving and entering the world in the same way,” she says. The Paracas civilization is remembered for its finely woven, brightly colored clothes, and its textile craftsmanship was integral to its peoples’ funerary practices. “They bury the figures with these intricate handwoven textiles that are crafted at every important event in the person’s life––like when they first got their hair cut, or when they got married––and then they would be buried with these moments.” For the Paracas, each textile wrapped around a corpse is a reflection of an important aspect of that person’s life. Colorful fabrics rendered in red, blue, and yellow surround the individual with the memories of their lives, their culture, and their legacy.

Zapata’s life and artwork revolve around the fetishized, the feminine, and her own multifaceted identity. Even her hair, long and dyed an intense shade of orange, mimics the bins of vibrant yarn filling the walls. Looking at her flamboyant figures, with their shaggy neon clumps and the occasional piece of flowing human hair, it is not hard to see her sculptures as embodiments of her own life. With each artwork Zapata creates, she carries her heritage, and herself, with honor.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_focus/8-unbeweavable-textile-artists-redefining-the-tra ditional-medium-55332 March 23, 2018

IN FOCUS 8 "Unbeweavable" Textile Artists Redefining the Traditional Medium By Jillian Billard MARCH 23, 2018

Sarah Zapata "If I Could" Installation, Image courtesy of Deli Gallery

Often when we think about textiles, craftwork and utility come to mind. This connotation is largely ​ ​ attributed the medium's rich history across a variety of cultures, from the monumental, decorative medieval European unicorn tapestries woven from wool and silk thread; to the Kente fabrics of 17th century Ashanti weavers in present-day Ghana; to Peruvian woven rugs and tapestries of the Quechua tradition, dating back as early as 2500 B.C. An integral part of community and daily life, textile fabrication has historically provided people with shelter, costuming, decoration, protection, and comfort; and has also been used to document and express narrative.

In an age of rapid consumption, production, and isolation, a number of contemporary artists are veering towards handmade practices which take time, patience, and are often experienced communally.

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Whether incorporating ready-made found textiles into a work or meticulously creating their own, textile artists are particularly difficult to categorize. However, one thing that binds each of these artists together is their awareness of the historical and cultural significance of the medium. With the roots of the medium in mind, these eight artists address topics ranging from colonialism, to power dynamics, to disposal and regeneration.

SARAH ZAPATA

"If I Could" installation at Deli Gallery, Image courtesy of the artist

Sarah Zapata established herself as one to watch with her installation "If I Could" at Deli Gallery last March. Born in 1988 in Corpus Christi, Texas, the Brooklyn-based, Peruvian-American artist utilizes traditional Andean and Peruvian hand practices of rug making and weaving to create vibrant, abstract textile works. Zapata utilizes these labor-intensive practices in order to examine her own cultural identity, in addition to reclaiming a medium that has historically been considered "women's work." Working with wall-hanging, sculpture, and installation, Zapata makes playfully tactile works that appear boundless, exuding beyond the constraints of the frame; and in some cases, as in "If I Could," visitors are invited to interact with the works under the condition that they are barefoot. For the installation (pictured above), Zapata invited poets and performers to embody the space, including artists Kayla Guthrie, Monica Mirabile, LA Warman, and Andrea Arrubla.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

https://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/womens-work-reworked March 8, 2018

“I love that song. I remember it from my childhood,” Sarah Zapata says of “El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could),” ​ ​ Simon and Garfunkel’s 1970 hit version of a 1913 orchestral piece by Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles. Because her father is from Peru, the haunting melody, played by Andean band Las Incas with traditional quena flutes and charango lutes, strikes a chord, feels familial. ​ ​ ​ ​ But there’s something else that moves her in the lyrics Paul Simon wrote for the tune, about dreams, aspirations, and the choices we create for ourselves. “‘If I could’ – it’s such a beautiful way to talk about humility and ability,” says the 29-year old artist, who weaves, sews, coils, tufts, and latch-hooks fiber and other materials into vivid, seductively tactile sculptures, wall hangings, and environments. The phrase holds so much meaning for her that she chose it for the title of her solo show at the Deli Gallery in New York last spring. “If I Could” was a room with no art on its white walls, but a dazzling spectacle on the floor. Let’s walk through it. Picture a patchwork of plush shag carpets, sewn by Zapata in a riot of bright colors. Here and there in coiled baskets stand child-size anthropomorphic forms, seven in all, wrapped in fabric and shag. These, she explains, are a nod to the “mummy bundles” of the ancient Paracas people of southern Peru, who

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placed their dead in the natal position (to leave life as they came), swaddling the bodies in layers of beautifully handwoven and embroidered burial cloths. To enter the space and encounter the figures, visitors must remove their shoes and walk barefoot through the plush lawn of yarn – a ritual of humility. It might feel pleasant, even mildly erotic, but for many, it’s also an unsettling act of vulnerability. Through this experience, Zapata invites us to practice an altered state of mind and sense of place, a new idea of how we might engage with the world, if we could. She makes art to investigate her own identity and path – what it means to be a Texan living in Brooklyn, a lesbian raised as an evangelical Christian, a US citizen of Latin American descent, a contemporary artist inspired by ancient civilizations, a textile crafter who takes “women’s work” to the realm of fine art. In the bigger picture, her work speaks to accepting and celebrating our circumstances – whatever they are or however society perceives them to be – to reclaim and maybe transcend them. A few years ago, she read “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down,” by Latinx and queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz. “That was a formative essay for me. He used ‘performativity’ to talk about Latinidad [a collective ​ ​ Latin American identity and culture] and how one is supposed to perform. I ran with it as soon as I heard that word,” Zapata recalls. “I wanted to be making work that’s overtly female and overtly handmade. Like I’m performing how I’m theoretically supposed to, but working within those confines to break down that means of control.” Her work resists neat categorization. “Appearing at a time when the so-called queer craft aesthetic in contemporary art production is being celebrated and well documented, Sarah and her art represent a truly forward-looking approach to the genre,” observes Danny Orendorff, curator of public programs at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, where Zapata was artist-in-residence in 2016 and last fall participated in the experimental exhibition “Studio Views,” turning a gallery into her workspace. She “complicates conventions,” Orendorff says, “by intersecting theories of gender and ethnicity with pre-colonial histories and techniques, and producing textiles, sculptures, and installations that have as much to do with visual art as with emergent ideas in fashion and design.” While complex and personal, her themes are also universal. “There’s so much about our lives that we can’t control. Yet our perception, and what that means moving forward, is something that to some extent we can,” she reflects. “What has helped me find my place and move forward is figuring out where I’ve been.” Born in Corpus Christi and raised outside Dallas, she asserted her individuality as a child by decorating her clothes with hot-glued appliqué and paint. “I didn’t fit in in Texas. I think that was my way of trying to escape and relate to my body.” At the University of North Texas, she majored in studio art with a concentration in fiber and fell in love with weaving. “Weaving is such a beautiful human tradition, but more importantly, it’s such a woman’s tradition.” Zapata, whose father is an engineer, is intrigued by the notion that the female weavers of yore might be engineers today, as some have suggested, because the craft demonstrates a “wonderful use of mechanics,” she says. After earning her BFA in 2011, she headed to New York and set up her little loom in her Brooklyn apartment, determined “to get my foot in somewhere and work as hard as I could.” From there, Zapata says, “the stars aligned.” She built a circle of friends in the arts, cultivated her techniques and narratives, and started exhibiting in group shows. Through a travel grant, she was able to research some of Latin America’s rich textile traditions firsthand. In 2014, she spent two months in Peru, studying tapestry techniques. “It was wonderful to see how this tradition exists now. Just walking around Lima, which is such a metropolitan space, you could see women carrying around drop spindles in their pockets.” An election was in progress there, and campaign posters used cartoon characters to illustrate voting procedures; women, Zapata noticed, were represented by a particularly goofy, childlike face. “It attracted and appalled me at the same time. I wanted to take the image and make it more powerful.” Back in New York, she incorporated it into Siempre X, a wall hanging commission for the cafe ​ ​ at El Museo del Barrio. It was loosely styled after arpilleras, the quilts made in the 1970s by Chilean ​ ​ women, later adopted in other Latin American countries.

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Since then, she’s been happily juggling a busy schedule of residencies, projects, and public performances. For New York Textile Month in September 2016, she created a window display at the Fifth Avenue flagship store of Marimekko, the iconic design company. Lately she’s been elaborating on an installation she started at MAD. Its title, To Teach or to Assume Authority, refers to a line in the Bible ​ ​ about things women should not be permitted to do. “New York has been somewhere I’m able to be myself, to meet people I admire and care for deeply, to do so many things,” says Zapata. “I love going to the opera. I just started taking a ballet class.” Life as an up-and-coming artist in the big city, she has found, is expensive and at times stressful, but also full of possibility. “I just keep working to make it happen.” Zapata has work on view in “Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly,” at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, through February 24; “Forms and Alterations” at 808 Gallery, Boston University, through March 25; and “Haptic Tactics” at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York City, February 18 – May 20.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

https://hyperallergic.com/408006/knitting-together-the-beginnings-of-a-queer-feminine-future/ December 25, 2017

Knitting Together the Beginnings of a Queer, Feminine Future Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field reimagines the Museum of Arts and Design’s third floor gallery ​ space as an artist’s studio for two, both demystifying the process of fiber art making and allowing the artists to dialogue with a curious public.

Museum of Arts and Design installation view of the current iteration of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field (all photos by ​ ​ Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design)

Fiber art is worthy of the same prestige we afford painting and sculpture but seldom ever receives it. And despite a growing educational effort by curators, scholars, and cultural institutions to promote the woolly practice to the public as a reputable one, fiber artists often find themselves defending their work against onlookers who label their work “craft” in diminutive terms.

Yet studies show that fiber art is the most popular art form in America. The last study of public ​ participation in the arts carried out by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2012 revealed that 13% of ​ adults have engaged in weaving, crocheting, quilting, needlepoint, knitting, or sewing in that same year — more than any other art form, including music. Perhaps easy access to the medium offends the contemporary art world’s elite sensibilities. Who really cares about knits? ​ ​

Apparently, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) does. Co-curated by Carli Beseau and Danny ​ ​ Orendorff, Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Fieldreimagines the museum’s third floor gallery space ​ ​ as an artist’s studio for two. Cycle one of the exhibition, which ran until October 15th, featured LJ ​ Robertsand Sarah Zapata. Cycle two, which began on October 20th, features Xenobia Bailey and Maria ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Hupfield. During the artists’ stay, museumgoers have the opportunity to see fiber artists at work. (The ​

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artists are required to be present for gallery hours four days out of the week.) Visiting the exhibition for both cycles, I found that this curatorial decision smartly pulled double duty: it both demystifies the process of fiber art making and allows artists to dialogue with a curious public.

Installation view of the cycle one of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field with Sarah ​ Zapata

This curatorial decision alights on how critical themes of community and engagement are to the history of fiber art. Zapata’s massive, prismatic tapestries negotiate her Peruvian heritage with an interest in feminist theory. Looking like a mix-and-match shag rug, her textiles appear heavy on the wall; they resist being particularly spatially ordered in preference to their own formless slouch. Zapata wants to unspool (pun intended) the gendered use of ceremonial textiles from Peru and elsewhere. With this work, she asks: If women weave them, why are they so often prohibited from later viewing them in a sacred context? Following in the footsteps of German textile artist Anni Albers, Zapata is specifically interested in the history of pre-Columbian, hand-woven textiles. But whereas Albers indulges in the geometry of such designs, Zapata fights against it. She reconfigures the ceremonial formalism into an informal, ad hoc formlessness. The typical monotheistic model of the patriarchal worship tradition becomes multiple, opening to new interpretations and political insinuations.

Roberts’s radical interests are far less rooted in ancient ritual. Drawing on the queer radicalism of lesbian separatists from the 1970s, Roberts digs into a particularly niche utopian zeitgeist: van culture. A nearby vitrine showcases the wonderfully quixotic aims of this project, which Roberts has titled, “VanDykesTransVanTransDykesTranAmTransGrandmaDykeVanDamDEntalDamDamn” (2017). The van is a stand-in for a utopian place. The van can go anywhere or just stay put. It can be anything — a vansion, a vantasy, vanarchy. The van, like queerness, is always arriving. Here, Roberts includes a choice quote from queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz: “Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it … The future is queerness’ domain.” At the time I saw the work , Roberts’s project already sputtered with the wild possibilities that queerness affords. During my visit, I saw spools of neon-colored yarn framing where the van would eventually be. I imagine Roberts’s van surely ended up being vibrant and imposing — a massive, rollicking, lumpy, busy, hulking, overwhelming thing that to my minimalist-minded eyes would seem larger than life.

Installation view of cycle one of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field with LJ Roberts ​ ​

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Although the aim of this exhibition cycle is for both sets of artists to complete their projects, I ironically find something delectably smart about the unfinished nature of what I saw. Zapata’s feminist investigation of ceremonial objects is an interesting, if expansive, undertaking — one worth a lifetime. Likewise, Roberts’ utopian van is chimerical, a vision of a queerness that’s elusive and caught in the undertow of hippie idealism. Such idealism is something we seek, but seldom obtain.

Installation view of cycle two of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field with Maria Hupfield ​ ​

Cycle two brings the studios of Bailey and Hupfield into conversation with each other. They replace the wildly unspooled works of Roberts and Zapata with more conservative and quiet fiber works. Roberts’ studio space is now occupied by Bailey, whose “Time + Space = Place” involves the layering of beautifully crocheted concentric circles to convey something akin to kinetic poetry. But while Bailey clearly has an eye for color and pattern, her work never energizes the museum space in the ways you’d hope. Educated in musicology and industrial design, Bailey’s educational background is what you get in her work. Her wall pieces feel particularly hampered by a deference to academic discipline. (I could easily see her leftmost work hanging in a university’s music department.) But perhaps it’s the meditative patterning of Bailey’s overlapping mandalas that bores me. Something about these feels very phoned in, or evincing too little originality on the artist’s part. I think what’s missing here is an initiation into the performative aspects of Bailey’s work. Barbie dolls line the artist’s desk, and in the center of the room we see a life-sized, Black manikin draped in Bailey’s concentric circles. Despite an avowed allegiance to music, the artist never reveals how her psychedelic circles would be worn or used. How would someone perform Bailey’s textiles? And what is the relationship here between Bailey’s textiles and funk music?

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That’s something only hinted to in the studio’s accompanying text, but not actually evident in what’s on display inside Bailey’s studio.

Across the gallery, Hupfield has transformed her studio space into a living laboratory, called “Electric Pop and Hum Freestyle Variations Studio.” Rooted in her identity as a member of the Anishinaabe Nation at Wasauksing First Nation, Hupfield emphasizes the links between indigenous culture and contemporary textile practice. Across the back of her studio hangs a massive banner that shouts various called for action, solidarity, and vigilance. The banner reminded me of the numerous signs carried around at the Keystone XL Pipeline protests that reignited public recognition of how modern ​ ​ governments continue to disenfranchise and ignore indigenous peoples. Hupfield is keenly aware of her politicized identity. Within the studio, she is now also creating “Sacagawea Mail Cai,” a suit of armor consisting of Sacagawea one-dollar coins. Posing an answer to the question of how to embrace our inherited histories, problems and all, Hupfield literally cashes in on the Sacagawea story. The monetization of her personhood into dollar coins becomes defensive shielding, heavy but fortifying. And although “Sacagawea Mail Cai” sits unfinished in the artist’s studio at MAD, it is scheduled to be completed by the end of the residency for a performance in January.

Installation view of cycle two of Studio Views: Craft in the ​ Expanded Field with Xenobia Bailey ​

As a package deal, cycles one and two of Studio Visits has ​ ​ made an exceptionally strong argument for a revitalized interest in fiber art. True to its title, the exhibition demonstrates how broad the field is, spanning queer utopian thought to indigenous protest and historical meditation. If this is a first taste of the expanded field of fiber arts, then we must look forward to what comes next: textiles whose materiality translates into transcendence, fibers that become spiritual complements of prayer.

Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field continues at the ​ Museum of Arts and Design (2 Columbus Circle, Central Park South) through January 7.

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https://www.artforum.com/inprint/issue=201708&id=71233 October 2017

TOP TEN

Sarah Zapata

Sarah Zapata makes work using time-consuming and labor-intensive processes such as handweaving, ​ rope coiling, latch-hooking, and sewing to produce large-scale works that explore the feminine, the fetishized, and the handmade. Since August, she’s been working on an interactive installation at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York as part of the exhibition series “Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field,” on view through October 15.

1 THE GREAT CLOTH ​ The Great Cloth was discovered buried at Cahuachi, a Nazcan ceremonial center in southern Peru. At twenty-three feet wide and almost two hundred feet long, it is one of the largest handwoven cloths in the Western Hemisphere. The textile’s function is unknown—rugs did not come into use in this area until after Spanish colonization—although it’s made of the same type of cloth that was used by the Paracas culture to wrap mummy bundles. The edges of the fabric were destroyed during excavation, and it’s impossible to determine what type of loom was used by studying the weave patterns alone—showing how little we know about pre-Columbian technology, but also how truly advanced this technology must have been. What’s more, due to its size, the cloth testifies to how the women in the community worked together to achieve a singular goal.

Excavation of the Great Cloth, Nazca Valley, Peru, 1952.

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2 JOHN ADAMS, THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER (1991) ​ ​ ​ Having access to the opera is one of my favorite aspects of living in New York, though I try to steer clear of spaghetti-and-meatball performances and seek out the more unconventional productions. This Adams opera has been ingrained in my mind since I attended the closing performance of its run at Lincoln Center in 2014. Based on true events, it depicts the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jew who was the lone individual killed on a cruise liner hijacked by the Palestine Liberation Front off the Egyptian coast in 1985. There had been protesters outside the Metropolitan Opera on opening night, and a simulcast of the production had been canceled over allegations that the opera glorifies terrorism and anti-Semitism. But the piece left me weeping over its portrayal of trauma through a beautiful, complicated score.

3 DIANE TORR AND STEPHEN BOTTOMS, SEX, DRAG, AND MALE ROLES: INVESTIGATING ​ ​ GENDER AS PERFORMANCE (2010) ​ This book by Torr (1948–2017)—who began as a classical dancer and went on to bring go-go dancing to New York’s art and Women’s One World communities—is part memoir, part history of drag kings. Supplemented by the critical reflections of theater historian Stephen Bottoms (which would be an incredible drag name), the volume presents a thorough historical account of women performing as men, and of how Torr ultimately arrived at her “Man for a Day” workshops after a long career of examining the potency of female sexual expression.

Katarina Peters, Man for a Day, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 96 minutes. ​ ​ ​ Diane Torr.

4 THE PEARL: EROTICA FROM THE UNDERGROUND MAGAZINE OF VICTORIAN ENGLAND ​ (1968) I love erotica. This is a collection of underground porn that was published in London between 1879 and 1880. The limericks, narratives, and poems illustrate the diversity of tastes and preferences during this time, which could be startlingly obscene: Erotic scenarios included bestiality, incest, and necrophilia—disproving Steven Marcus’s theory that the Victorians created a “pornotopia” wherein external reality and its problems were swept away in the tide of sex.

Page from The Pearl: A Monthly Journal of Facetiae and ​ Voluptuous Reading (Augustin Brancart, ca. 1890). ​

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5 JUNIUS BIRD, PARACAS FABRICS AND NAZCA NEEDLEWORK: 3RD CENTURY B.C.–3RD ​ ​ CENTURY A.D. (1954) ​ I found this book at the New York Public Library, which has a multitude of texts on pre-Columbian civilizations in its collection. Bird was an archaeologist who was said to have inspired Indiana Jones. The volume presents many color images and itemized accounts of textiles Bird encountered in southern Peru. The fabrics of the Paracas and Nazca civilizations abound with engaging content and complex construction. Bird is a thorough documentarian, and this book provides visual evidence of just how contemporary these pieces are.

Page detail from Junius Bird’s Paracas Fabrics and Nazca Needlework: 3rd ​ Century B.C.– 3rd Century A.D. (National Publishing Company, 1954). Detail of ​ Paracas Necropolis mantel skirt, 800 BCE–100 BCE.

6 KENT MONKMAN ​ This past February I traveled to Toronto to give a talk at the Textile Museum of Canada. While there, I was able to visit Kent Monkman’s exhibition “Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience” at the University of Toronto. The First Nations artist developed a drag alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle—a “Hollywood Indian stereotype” turned on its head—who featured in his paintings, videos, and performances during a time when the Canadian government was aggressively disenfranchising indigenous people. Incorporating artifacts of native cultures from the university’s collection, the works on display demonstrated a tangible relationship between the past and present, and showed how the artist’s community is still impacted by colonialism. I’m always thinking about my own relationship to tradition, as I live a rather untraditional life, and it was illuminating to see how Monkman, who is of Cree and Irish descent, deals with his mixed ancestry.

Kent Monkman, The Scream, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 7 × 11'. ​ ​ ​

7 SARAH KERNOCHAN AND HOWARD SMITH, MARJOE (1972) ​ ​ ​ I was raised in a devout Southern Baptist household, so this documentary on evangelical preacher Marjoe Gortner—whose name is a hybrid of Mary and Joseph—really resonated with me in its portrayal of the performative nature of Christianity in the southern US. Gortner began delivering sermons as a child, which turned out to be a lucrative spectacle until his persona outgrew its uniqueness. He left the church as a teenager, but returned in his late twenties because he needed the cash. Plagued by his conscience, he reveals his double life and moneymaking tactics when he allows the filmmakers to follow his final tour of revivals through the Bible Belt.

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Marjoe Gortner at age four, Long Beach, CA, 1949. Photo: Peter Stackpole/Getty Images. ​

8 WILLIAM A. ROSSI, THE SEX LIFE OF THE FOOT AND SHOE (1976) ​ ​ ​ A pseudoanthropological study by podiatrist and leading footwear historian William Rossi, this book takes the reader on a journey of how the foot and shoe have been instrumental in sex acts and culture. Apparently we humans, as the only full-time bipedal organisms on the planet, are able to have sex the way we do largely thanks to our feet. My copy of the book has been particularly well-loved: It was once in the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection, and someone cut off the cover image of interlocking shoes.

9 PARACAS MUMMY BUNDLES ​ I’m interested in how textiles that aren’t garments can be activated by the body. One example is the handwoven cloth used by the Paracas civilization to bury their dead in a sort of fabric womb. The mummy, bent in the fetal position to indicate that it entered and left the world in the same manner, was placed in a large basket that was then wrapped over and over with these intricately patterned textiles.

Adorned mummy, Paracas culture, Peru, ca. 200 BCE. Photo: Gianni Dagli ​ Orti/REX/Shutterstock.

10 AUNQUE ​ Meaning “although”—my favorite term in both Spanish and English. It’s a beautiful word that encourages positive, sensitive contradiction.

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https://craftcouncil.org/post/studio-views-museum-arts-and-design September 18, 2017

"Studio Views" at the Museum of Arts and Design

LJ Roberts, Sarah Zapata, Xenobia Bailey, and Maria Hupfield offer an up-close view of the creative process in a unique exhibition.

Author Megan Guerber

Sarah Zapata at work in her gallery-situated studio for "Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field. Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design

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As makers increasingly blur the lines between disciplines, experiment with scale and materials, and embrace performative and socially-engaged work, museums face a conundrum: How do you exhibit such work? Traditional models just don’t seem to do the trick.

New York’s Museum of Arts and Design attempts a solution with “Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded ​ Field,” an exhibition suggesting that process is as important as product. ​ Divided into two sessions, “Studio Views” hosts four resident artists for two micro-residencies at a time. Each artist is a MAD Studios Program alumni with a focus on textile work. The first session, on view now, pairs young makers working from a queer perspective: LJ Roberts [see “Landing Places”] and ​ ​ ​ ​ Sarah Zapata. ​

Ephemera guiding LJ Roberts work-in-progress, a full-scale conversion van inspired by queer groups who traveled the US via van. Photo: Jenna Bascom, courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

The show offers the residents a chance to step out from behind the creative curtain and work publicly in gallery spaces-cum-studios, where they can engage with museum-goers. Visitors are invited to stop by during open studio hours to observe the artists, ask questions, and witness the development of a work. They can also peruse an exhibit of video, ephemera, research materials, drawings, and studio experiments borrowed from the residents to learn more about what inspires them. Finally, a show co-curated by the resident makers contextualizes their work within the history of experimental craft. The pieces, ranging from the 1930s to the present, are gathered from MAD’s permanent collection. The session with Roberts and Zapata runs through October 15. Starting October 20, craft giant Xenobia ​ Bailey and performer Maria Hupfield take over until the exhibition ends on December 17, 2017. ​ ​ ​

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https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/studio-views-craft-in-the-expanded-field October 2017

MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field

Photograph by Jenna Bascom / Courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design

Two Brooklyn-based alumnae of the museum’s studio program are working on-site in the first phase of this two-part show. The third-generation Detroit native LJ Roberts is in the midst of compiling an extensive tribute to nomadic lesbian van culture, which she started in 2014, using a mechanical sock-maker and a Barbie knitting machine to mark the life-size outline of a van onto a quilted black background with hundreds of brightly colored cotton-stuffed tubes. In an adjoining room, furnished with a sewing machine, a worktable, and a loom, the Texas-born artist Sarah Zapata is busily creating textiles inspired by pre-Columbian artifacts found at the sacred Nazca site of Cuahachi, in present-day Peru. A

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beautiful indigo print of a woman in a fantastical hat and cowrie-shell earrings, by Xenobia Bailey, and a gray felt shovel, by Maria Hupfield, offer a preview of the next phase of the show. Easily overlooked but also worth visiting is a small exhibition of works chosen by the artists from the museum’s permanent collection, which includes two handsome monochrome prints by the Bauhaus great Anni Albers and a pair of intricately beaded tennis shoes by the Kiowa artist Teri Greeves.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/editors-picks-tk-things-to-see-in-new-york-this-week-august-21-1039 418 August 21, 2017

Editors’ Picks: 11 Things to See in New York This Week Sarah Cascone & Caroline Goldstein, August 21, 2017 ​ ​ ​

Tuesday, August 22–Saturday, October 15

Work by Sarah Zapata and LJ Roberts. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design. 1. Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field, Cycle 1 featuring Sarah Zapata and LJ Roberts at the ​ ​ Museum of Arts and Design Sarah Zapata and LJ Roberts, both alumni of the Museum of Arts and Design’s Artist Studios Program, will work live in the museum to create large-scale, immersive textile installations that subvert and expand traditional notions of craft practice. Location: Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle Price: $16 (included in general admission) Time: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

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https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/ypabvy/a-peruvian-artist-weaves-her-story-into-comforting-rainb ow-yarn-art May 13, 2017

A Peruvian-American Artist Weaves Her Story into Sumptuous Rainbow Yarn Art Sarah Zapata weaves warm, fuzzy yarn installations that demand critical thought. Cailey Rizzo May 13 2017, 7:45am

For some, the past is like a comforting blanket in which to curl up. For textile artist Sarah Zapata, her ​ ​ ancestry is a still a blanket—but one that analyzes and critiques while it comforts. The New York City-based artist creates large-scale, woven sculptures that explore femininity "in its conception, ​ ​ materials, construction, everything," she tells Creators. Using "accessible, engendered" materials like ​ yarn, Zapata weaves a story of her own cultural and gender identity. ​ Zapata originally went to college to study fashion, but in her first semester she took a weaving class that "completely changed" her life. "Being half-Peruvian, I wanted to learn more about this culture, and ​ ​ weaving was my language for investigating my own history," she says. "Hand weaving is such an important part of human history, specifically to women, and I wanted to examine where I fit within those confines."

Photo: David Kirshoff She became fascinated with the gendered ideas of traditional artisan crafts, like sewing, coiling, and weaving and attempted to create architectural pieces using traditional techniques. Her textile sculptures explore how traditional crafts—across both American and Peruvian cultures—are used by women to make political statements. She compared the "pussyhats" of the Women's March to aripilleras, or colorful patchwork collages created "exclusively by women in Peru during a time of guerrilla occupation, and they expressed human rights abuses to the outside world."

Photo: Cindy Ord Many of her pieces are designed for site-specific installation. In her series If I Could—named after the ​ ​ traditional Peruvian song "El Condor Pasa" (as made famous by SImon and Garfunkel)—Zapata required ​ ​ viewers to take off their shoes before they could enter her fanciful, textile world. Inside the installation was a colorful explosion of fabric that invited visitors to reach out and touch. "Since people already have an established relationship with textiles, they already

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want to touch everything" she explains, "so I wanted to give them a little something. Because people understand the materials, I hope they experience my work in a critical way. I wanted that show to be a space to create positive change, for individuals to engage with each other and emphasize the power of fantasy. I work in accessible materials in efforts to change perceptions and intentions."

Zapata's work is on view as part of an all-female group show at Chamber Gallery in New York City. Her ​ ​ work will also be displayed at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center starting June 11. To view more of her work, visit her website. ​ ​

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https://www.wallpaper.com/design/matylda-kryzkowski-collection-3-chamber-gallery-new-york#197756 May 22, 2017

Matylda Krzykowski's all-female spectacle at Chamber spans sexiness to messiness DESIGN / 22 MAY 2017 / BY JULIE BAUMGARDNER

There is an exhibition format that has developing rapidly in the last few years to have all-women shows, as political statements to thoughtful rewriting of historical narratives and creating opportunities for so many artists, designers, thinkers who because of their gender, haven’t had the most institutional play. Matylda Krzykowski is aware of this but as she says, ‘I’m not playing into trends’. For her fourth instalment of ‘Collection #3’ at Chamber – whose programming follows a chaptered approach – the Poland-born, Basel-based multi-hyphenate designer and curator sought to make a show based around Pop-artist Richard Hamilton’s domestic satire collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? from 1956, and its update in 1992. As a show featuring all-women architects, artists and designers, Krzykowski designed the show as a ‘physical commentary be part of the broader conversation’. She says, ‘I had this little dream in 60 years, we look at this collage and think, “Oh, that’s what people would own and desire”.’ Mistake not, however, Krzykowski is ‘more interested in formulating topics’, she explains. It’s not so much political or identity-driven as it is ‘a sociological report that we can reference in the future to the past, like we are documenting something,’ she adds. Immediately entering the bottle-necked Chelsea gallery is a direct conversation between Johanna Grawunder repurposed neon lights reflecting on Sabine Marcelis resin cast and burnished steel ‘Equals’ easy chair. It’s clear Krzykowski is eager to feature designers-artists who highlight the multiplicity of womanly expression. Sexiness, femininity, nurturing are all in ample supply here; but so is hardness, endurance, pluckiness, messiness.

‘Character of Color Phenomena’ vessel by Sarah Zapata Slogan feminism isn’t anywhere in sight. ‘We are getting attention at the moment and we have to use it wisely. Not just celebrate each other, these dinners and exhibitions, but we want it long-term so how can

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we make it happen? That’s what’s next – how we change the perspective and the vocabulary,’ Krzykowski says.

Proceeding into the gallery is Zohra Opoku’s One of Me II, which the Ghanaian artist who won the Armory Show's ‘Presents’ prize this past March, almost acts as a living painting. Neighbouring to Opoku ​ ​ is Åsa Jungnelius’ ‘Implements’ sculptural series, 1950s Domus-inspired lipstick cases that suggest makeup as armour. There is indeed something called the ‘lipstick effect’ wherein during recessions and economically troubled times lipstick sales go up—a way to uplift moods and brace the harshness. Krzykowski says, ‘Juan [Mosqueda, Chamber’s founder] said, “These are too literal, they're going to ruin the show.” So I made a bet with him: If we sell them, Juan will wear lipstick for Design Miami.’ ​ ​

Located in the main room, Mira Nakashima’s burled elm wood screen, which ‘is not a typical piece of furniture’. Krzykowski explains: ‘She’s a wise woman and elegant woman.’ Buro Belén's coffee table – where a raw slab of pink rose quartz sits atop avela memory foam cushion – is a playful counter balance between untouched nature and domestic comfort, a pair not often found together. Ania Jaworska’s seating collection in neoprene has a fun, cartoonish feel, while Katie Stout’s amoebic desk, also painted pink, is a humorous pun for women in charge.

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http://officemagazine.net/chamber-nyc-creates-space-female-designers May 13, 2017

Chamber NYC creates a space for female designers May 13, 2017

Room With It's Own Rules is curator Matylda Krzykowski's realized and refreshing pedestal for under-represented women in design.

The show, nestled in a narrow, art-deco style nook on 23rd St., is incredibly thoughtful, strongly aesthetic, and all-female; but its artists will feel inspired yet entirely enraged by the fact that this is news. Each piece has been carefully created for this show, with thought and effort in the execution of their goal— to have you remember the obvious, "Oh, yeah, girls make great art." Photos and Text by Anna Zanes. ​ ​

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May 2017

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In bloom

Long Island City is a neighbourhood with a baroque street system that makes no sense, though it makes a place like Deli Gallery feel secreted away. Sarah Zapata’s If I Could requires visitors to take off their shoes: as soon as our toes curl around the hand-woven rug that fills the entire gallery, we’re allowed to indulge in something daringly informal rather than bother ourselves with decorum. Zapata is Peruvian-American, and she studied indigenous rug-making on a residency in Peru. While her approach to craft isn’t new, it works – discovering a pocket of plush feathery flu lulls me into euphoria. The

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installation a ects a blooming Andean meadow, populated with freestanding sculptures that resemble hunched pack animals or high-altitude foliage. If all this feels too downy and impervious to critique, check your fucking shoes at the door. Zapata spawns eroticism out of craft, flooding us in jouissance that’s greater than the sum of our sensations.

-Sam Korman

https://www.out.com/art-books/2017/3/22/sarah-zapata-examines-queer-intersectionality-technicolor-y arn-sculptures March 22, 2017

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Sarah Zapata Examines Queer Intersectionality Through Technicolor Yarn Sculptures

Photography: Ignacio Torres "I wanted to think about what is means to be a woman and blow that the fuck up." BY WHITNEY MALLETT ​ WED, 2017-03-22 13:27

With her solo show If I Could at Deli Gallery, queer New York-based artist Sarah Zapata crafted a yarn ​ ​ ​ ​ garden that envelopes you in kitschy comfort. Carpeted with handmade shag rugs and landscaped with textile sculptures that rise up from the floor like small trees, both the scale and softness invite you to take a seat. Yarn drips down from select works like weeping willow branches and the room’s pastiche of colors feels at once childlike and wise to the universe’s capriciousness. The exhibition, named after a 1970 song, "El Condor Pasa," examines Zapata's cultural identity as a Peruvian-American lesbian through an abstraction of traditional crafts used by women. This past Sunday, inside the exhibition’s soft shelter, Zapata organized an evening of reading, dance and music. A shoeless crowd gathered on the rugs to witness four performances. Andrea Arrublaread first, ​ ​ kneeling in the middle of the room recounting candid memories and piercing observations with vulnerability and aplomb. LA Warman read next, the intimate singsongy cadence of her voice contrasted ​ ​ by her choice to turn her face away from the audience, hidden by a tiny three-paneled curtain. Kayla ​ Guthrie followed, crooning dreamy incantations over astral tunes while Monica Mirabile and Sarah ​ ​ ​ ​ Kinlaw closed out the program with a duet. The dancers began putting their feet in each other’s mouths ​ before transitioning to a choreographed routine complete with pantomimed pistols.

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OUT caught up with Zapata at her studio to talk about designing the show as a forum for generative interaction, subverting the connotations of craft and the intergenerational queer art world. OUT: In the text for this show, you’ve framed your textile practice as “gender and cultural performativity.” What does that mean to you? Sarah Zapata: Obviously I make women’s work and I’m interested in the traditional aspects of that. There’s still connotations that exist with women’s work. Even though craft is really having a moment, it’s still to some extent bastardized. I wanted to think about what is means to be a woman and blow that the fuck up. The show is kind of a pastiche of these connotations, like it’s so handmade. I want the hand to be so present in these really bombastic capacities. I love the term, "Performativitiy." I think it’s something that, as women, we have to think about and especially as a lesbian. It’s like women are everything in my life. As much as I can, I want to showcase that, overly.

And then, I was born in Texas but I’m half Peruvian. I started getting really interested in textiles because I wanted to know more about my relationship to this culture. Peru has such a rich history of textile-making in so many capacities, and my grandfather was a textile salesman in Northern Peru. My father is an engineer, but I've heard that women that were weavers would have been engineers had they been born in another time. I want to talk about these two histories—the United Stares and Peru—and how I relate to them as a woman. It's easy for some who are mixed to turn their identity off and on when it's advantageous. For me it is about respect: I never want to assert that I am speaking for the cultures as a whole but also it is something I carry with me often. Your work can exist in multiple spaces, as both art object and design object. You also collaborate with Olivia Galov and make wearable fashion pieces for the brand Daimorf. How do you navigate these different spaces? Craft is having a moment in my mind because of technology. There’s a push to preserve these handcrafts. What’s so important and wonderful about textiles is that there’s already this relationship that people have to them. I feel like it’s easier to change perceptions of textiles because of that. With ceramics, it’s a woman’s object amongst flatware. I think the fluidity of textiles is really important. Like everyone, the first thing they touch after being born other than another human is a blanket. People are like animals with textiles. That’s definitely something I wanted to work with in the show, too. You come into the space, but you can’t touch the sculptures obviously. I wanted to give them an inch and ask for a mile, type of thing. I do like people interacting with the work. I think it’s important. How else did you think about choreographing the space? It seems like you consciously designed a very social environment. I’m interested in making political work, but work that’s not directly so. The idea for the space was to create an environment for people to talk and to create positive change, to some extent. For me, that starts with conversation and face-to-face interaction. I wanted it to be a space where people could sit and be alone or sit and talk to people, and for it to just be this fantasy to see how a change of mind can change perception and then experience and mutual experience.

The show is about humility. To come in the space, you have to remove your shoes. It’s this ritual to change your mindset. I’m interested in humility and pushing myself. I feel like I have to work to my limits, to earn something. It’s this whole Christian shame thing. I wanted people to experience that too in this overdone sense of the hand. There’s a humility in how much labor there is involved with what you do.

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It’s very labor intensive, definitely. But I love it. I have this idea that you have to suffer for your work and I never want to lose that. How many hours of work do you think went into making this show? I have no idea. It was just hours and hours. Thankfully I got a grant to pay for it, so I took off time from work but it was so intense and terrible, especially because most of the work happened after Trump got elected. I was so excited—it’s such a privilege to get to work on my own work—but being alone every day for 12 hours a day listening to the news, it was just too intense. I think again that’s why I wanted it to be this experience for people, even for healing. Do you mostly listen to the news when you work? I’ll take breaks. I’ll listen to NPR. Then I’ll listen to books on tape. Shania Twain is really important. I listen to lectures, too. At a point, when you do something so repetitive like weaving, does it become meditative? You definitely have to be in charge of your mind because it is so mechanical. There have been points when I’ve been going through breakups and it’s terrible because all you can do is go over the same personal problems in your mind, just dwelling. It’s so terrible. I think that’s the importance of the podcast and listening to music. But it is quite meditative. You also write. Do you see it as one practice with the textiles? My work is interested in women's traditional histories, but it's an ongoing investigation. The current administration could be seen as a return to traditional values. I know and am thankful for being able to live a very untraditional life by being an out lesbian. It's important to me to understand what histories can be edifying as an individual and what is detrimental to overall progress. Being raised evangelical Christian in Texas is still a personal history I deal with quite frequently. I started writing erotica to deal with a lot of shame that I still carry from that upbringing. Feet are a common archetype to talk about one's relationship to god, it's the part of the body that anchors and carries us through the world. A lot of my writing uses text and narratives from the Bible. Did Christianity influence If I Could? For this show, I wanted there to be an element of this Christian history. The sculptures are based off the Paracas mummy bundles, which were pre-Incan burials in southern Peru. Bodies were buried in a basket, with the individual in the fetal position to form this narrative of leaving the earth as you entered. The body was then wrapped and wrapped in handwoven textiles to create a sort of womb. These sculptures take similar form to this history, but inside are these steel crosses. I wanted something to be hidden on the interior to represent this life force. The crosses are bent or curved, which is a contentious symbol: there are verses in Revelation that say a curved cross is a mark of the beast. There is other text interpreted to say that the curved cross is a sign of the humility and death of Jesus. I like this very polarized stance of an object and interpretation of text can point to humility and to the marginalized.

You've just finished a residency in the desert. How was that? It was really good and one of the weavings I did there is in the show. I went to AZ West with Andrea Zittel. It was fun. You get to shit in like a bucket and the community was really wonderful. It was a really nice balance. You could be alone or you could be with people. Joshua Tree is so alien. It was really incredible and to see Andrea and her work and her studio and her house. It’s crazy to see to the extent that she has designed her life. She’s living in a house that she designed with furniture that she designed and fabricated. She designs her own clothes and people make them for her. And now she’s starting to weave the fabric for her clothes. Even the people who come to the residency, they are invited. Even who she interacts with is very curated. It’s certainly very interesting. I think she’s a Virgo so everything is very controlled. It’s so funny because I think everyone has a fantasy, “I want to be in my own world,” and she really is. Georgia O’Keefe too, she designed and made all her own clothes. It was her world. I feel like very few women get to do that. You were in a group show at LAXart earlier this year. I know you are a big fan of Maggie Nelson’s writing and then you’re in this show

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with her partner Harry Dodge. I guess because the queer art world is so small, the boundaries between icon and peer become really porous. That was a huge honor. and actually when I went to the desert, I went to LA afterwards. When I went to see that show, and Harry Dodge was having a conversation with Candice Lin, and I got to meet him and he was like, “Oh I love your work.” I really died. That’s a really hard thing to navigate to be honest. The queer art world is really small but I definitely feel really nervous all the time. Like I know K8 Hardy and A.K. Burns and Katherine Hubbard. I know them and they are really wonderful, but I’m just nervous all the time just because I don’t feel like I’m there yet, but I like having that intergenerational conversation definitely. It's so incredible to see people who have made these incredible lives for themselves. Growing up in Texas, queer visibility was so low. I didn't really know what a lesbian was until late teens and I came out at 21. New York is just such an incredible community, and I'm so thankful to live in a place where there is not only visibility and engagement but generations that respect one another. It’s like it shouldn’t be but it is and I love it.

“If I Could” runs until April 9 at Deli Gallery, 10-16 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/editors-picks-9-things-see-new-york-week-879356 March 6, 2017

Editors’ Picks: 9 Things to See in New York This Week Sarah Cascone, March 6, 2017 ​

Artist Sarah Zapata attends as Marimekko and Museum of Arts and

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Design celebrate New York Textile Month at Marimekko New York on September 19, 2016 in New York City. Courtesy of Cindy Ord/Getty Images North America.

7. “Sarah Zapata: If I Could” at Deli Gallery ​ Peruvian-American artist Sarah Zapata has titled her solo show at Deli Gallery after “El Condor Pasa (If I Could),” the best-known Peruvian song in the world (thanks largely to a 1970 English-speaking cover by Simon & Garfunkel). Drawing on her Andean heritage and American upbringing, she has combined labor-intensive Peruvian hand-weaving and traditional American rug-making techniques, both typically performed by women, to create a monumental textile installation that stands as “a tactile embodiment of gender and cultural performativity.” Location: Deli Gallery, 10-16 46th Avenue, Queens Price: Free Time: Opening 7 p.m.–10 p.m.; Sunday 12 p.m.–5 p.m. and by appointment —Sarah Cascone

https://i-d.vice.com/es_mx/article/8xqqwp/mi-tribu-los-amigos-del-fotgrafo-ignacio-torres-celebran-la-v ida-en-ny February 1, 2017

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my tribe: the friends of photographer ignacio towers celebrate life in ny

In the 'My Tribe' series, iD's favorite photographers capture their extended creative family. Meet the circle of friends who hang out between Brooklyn and Chinatown of the Mexican-American living in New York, Ignacio Torres. Ignacio Torres FEB. 1 2017, 1:30 A.M.

Sarah Zapata, 28 years old Profession: Artist and writer How did you meet Ignacio? We met at the university in Texas. My first memory is of us manifesting our love for Selena on Halloween. What does friendship mean to you? Friendship means family. Who is your best friend? My girlfriend Minnie. Who would you like to be friends with? Phyllis Hyman. What do you like to do with your friends when they are together? Play cards, play pool , go to the opera. ¿ Best place to dance in New York? Big Apple Ranch. ¿ Movie character with the best style? Elise Elliot fromFirst Wives Club. If you were a character animating, who would you be? Although it is not animated, Pepe the Prawn of The Muppets . ¿ Favorite song of 2017 so far? Jesus to a Child by George Michael. What is your favorite tattoo? I have a tattoo of an agitator for McDonald's coffee that they stopped producing because they used it very often to consume cocaine. ¿ Piece of art that you'd steal? Rug (cochineal cat) by Ulrike Müller. If your wardrobe was a single designer and you did not have to pay for it, whose would it be? Patrick Kelly Do you have any life motto? Never waste a minute. If you could be a movie character, who would you be? Armand Goldman from The Birdcage .

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Sarah Zapata, 28 años Profesión: Artista y escritora ¿Cómo conociste a Ignacio? Nos conocimos en la universidad en Texas. Mi primer recuerdo es de nosotros manifestando nuestro amor por Selena en Halloween. ¿Qué significa la amistad para ti? La amistad significa familia. ¿Quién es tu mejor amigo? Mi novia Minnie. ¿De quién te gustaría ser amiga? Phyllis Hyman. ¿Qué te gusta hacer con tus amigos cuando están juntos? Jugar cartas, jugar pool, ir a la ópera. ¿Mejor lugar para bailar en Nueva York? Big Apple Ranch. ¿Personaje de película con el mejor estilo? Elise Elliot de First Wives Club. ¿Si fueras un personaje animando, quién serías? Aunque no es animado, Pepe the Prawn de The Muppets. ¿Canción favorita de 2017 hasta la fecha? Jesus to a Child de George Michael. ¿Cuál es tu tatuaje favorito? Tengo un tatuaje de un agitador para café de McDonald's que dejaron de producir porque lo usaban muy a menudo para consumir cocaína. ¿Pieza de arte que robarías? Rug (gato de cochinilla) de Ulrike Müller. Si tu guardarropa fuera de un sólo diseñador y no tuvieras que pagar por él, ¿de quién sería? Patrick Kelly. ¿Tienes algún lema de vida? Nunca desperdicies ni un minuto. Si pudieras ser un personaje de película, ¿quién serías? Armand Goldman de The Birdcage.

https://www.artforum.com/picks/id=64001 September 2016

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http://blog.wavehill.org/2016/01/21/arpilleras-sculptural-weaving-an-interview-with-sarah-zapata/ January 21, 2016

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Arpilleras & Sculptural Weaving: An Interview with Sarah Zapata Posted on January 21, 2016 ​

Danni Shen, Curatorial Fellow in Visual Arts, organizes and interprets exhibitions at Wave Hill.

In her practice, Winter Workspace 2016 artist Sarah Zapata investigates her position in society as a ​ ​ ​ ​ Peruvian American woman, highlighting the dynamism of women in indigenous Peruvian communities and the limitations still prevalent in the 21st century. With material choices that range from yarn, fabric and paper, to common articles of clothing and ubiquitous objects, she utilizes imagery and forms that deal with the feminine and the fetishized. Zapata’s practice addresses the undervalued time and labor-intensive processes of traditional craft techniques, such as weaving, basketry and textile making. Through her work, she attempts to reclaim and preserve the relevance of traditions considered women’s work or craft. At Wave Hill, Zapata will make small works with plant dyes based on Peruvian arpilleras, wall hangings sewn and quilted by women in Peru and Chile to express savage human rights abuses during times of guerilla occupation.

Sign up for Sarah Zapata’s Winter Workspace Workshop, Basketry, Functional and Wearable Art, this ​ ​ Saturday, January 23. It meets from 10AM to 1PM. Using fibers and native grasses, participants will fabricate wearable or decorative baskets while exploring traditional, as well as modern, South American cultures.

Danni Shen: What led you to work with weaving, fiber arts, textiles? Sarah Zapata: My father is from Piura, Peru, where his father was a textile salesman. Peru has such a rich historical background of weaving, and the process became a way for me to understand that culture. I felt a strong connection to weaving not only as a Peruvian American, but as a woman. I am very attracted to the historical aspects of weaving, but also how accessible they are: every human civilization has their own connection with textiles. I think of my work having a similar sense of time and place, as laborious sculpture through fiber and textiles, which is the only language I have to achieve what I want.

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DS: Have you been to Peru, and how did those travels inform your own understandings of those ideas your work addresses, e.g. the feminine, sexualized, traditional craft technique, etc. SZ: Visiting Peru was a challenging but enriching experience. I spent two months there last year studying tapestry weaving and spending time with my family. My family lives in Piura, which is in the on the northern coast, closer to Ecuador. I was fortunate to travel throughout the country and saw how much exists within the country. In a machismo society, little autonomy exists for women. I felt powerless at times, but always visible. DS: Is using the large loom is a relatively new process for you? How have you found working with large scale weaving? SZ: So I’ve been weaving for about nine years now, and I started with pattern weaving on a floor loom. I have an eight-harness floor loom at my studio, but for the residency at Wave Hill, I wanted to continue that practice in an workable way. I bought an upright tapestry loom that produces different cloth than my floor loom. There are just two sheds to tapestry weaving, whereas, as I said, my floor loom has eight harnesses to enable many different weave structures. When I was in Peru for two months last year, I studied tapestry weaving from the Ayacucho region. Though this is a different loom than what I was working on, the set-up and function is very similar. Large-scale weaving is fun and not as daunting as you might think. It feels like painting. I’ve recently been cutting up my handwoven cloth and sewing it onto a different surface, which I plan on continuing at Wave Hill. There is something very gratifying about disrupting something that feels so fragile. DS: You are specifically making arpilleras, right? Can you talk about this form of traditional craft and its relationship to your practice? SZ: Arpilleras were made during a time of guerilla occupation in Peru and Chile. They were quilted pieces made by women speaking up about human rights abuses that were occurring within their towns. Today, the pieces are made to describe life in communities. Arpilleras are traditionally sewn onto burlap, thus the name arpillera, the Spanish word for burlap. When I was in Peru, I saw how arpilleras differed from other handmade objects that were being sold to tourists. I don’t normally work within the archetype of narratives, so the arpilleras in my mind became objects with a different sense of value. I just finished my first exploration into this arpillera work in a large installation at El Museo that opens on February 3rd. At Wave Hill, I am continuing to experiment with this work but am thinking in a more three-dimensional way. DS: Are you planning to incorporate imagery into the arpilleras? Has anything at Wave Hill been a particular inspiration, or of interest? SZ: I’ve continued to use a simple drawing of a woman from a political campaign I saw when I was in Peru. It’s a line drawing reproduced in rhinestones that I’ve been transferring onto fingernails made from denim and handwoven fabric. While I’m at Wave Hill I want to continue using this drawing. Wave Hill has been a really positive experience, and has made me a lot more aware of quiet and beauty. Whenever I’m walking around the city, I try to find areas to look at that have no advertising. We’re constantly being advertised to and overly stimulated. While working up here so far, I feel a lot more at peace and able to have clarity. It feels so good to feel biological. DS: You state that “my past is understanding these traditional techniques that were many times used as a means of control.” Was this control a means to control women, or a means that women themselves used to regain control of their lives? Or both? SZ: Certainly both. Embroidery was employed in Victorian England as a way to control. It was thought that mindless activity would distract women from thinking. Arpilleraswere made in a time of political

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turmoil, explaining the dire conditions the people were in, expressing communities’ position when there was little understanding of what was going on. To me, it’s important to understand why I am performing these practices as a woman in a larger historical context. DS: In a capitalist-corporate society, how does the creation of time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often engendered work change in such socio-cultural contexts? SZ: There is inherent value in object-making connected to gender and racial performativity. I think of how my work can function inside these tropes, to be overly feminine, overly gaudy or overly handmade. I often think about value systems, but try to maintain that time is the most important currency. DS: Where do you see your practice heading? SZ: I want to continue to study weaving and expanding its sculptural possibilities. I plan on continuing to work with arpilleras—they continue to inspire me. Pictured above, from the top: Sarah Zapata, Winter Workspace studio shot. January 2016. Courtesy of Wave Hill. Sarah Zapata, no nonsense in an older goddess tradition, 2014. Coiled cotton rope, synthetic yarn, prosthetic feet, purchased used sock, 18K Peruvian goldnecklace, 9” x 8.5 ”x 10.5”. Image courtesy of the artist. Sarah Zapata, reflecting the pagan divinity Aphrodite, 2014-2015. Natural and synthetic yarn, rope, sock, acrylic nails, foot, shower pole. Courtesy of the artist.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_focus/8-unbeweavable-textile-artists-redefining-the-tra ditional-medium-55332

IN FOCUS

8 "Unbeweavable" Textile Artists Redefining the Traditional Medium

By Jillian Billard ​ MARCH 23, 2018

Sarah Zapata "If I Could" Installation, Image courtesy of Deli Gallery

Often when we think about textiles, craftwork and utility come to mind. This connotation is largely ​ ​ attributed the medium's rich history across a variety of cultures, from the monumental, decorative medieval European unicorn tapestries woven from wool and silk thread; to the Kente fabrics of 17th century Ashanti weavers in present-day Ghana; to Peruvian woven rugs and tapestries of the Quechua tradition, dating back as early as 2500 B.C. An integral part of community and daily life, textile fabrication has historically provided people with shelter, costuming, decoration, protection, and comfort; and has also been used to document and express narrative. In an age of rapid consumption, production, and isolation, a number of contemporary artists are veering towards handmade practices which take time, patience, and are often experienced communally. Whether incorporating ready-made found textiles into a work or meticulously creating their own, textile artists are particularly difficult to categorize. However, one thing that binds each of these artists together is their awareness of the historical and cultural significance of the medium. With the roots of the medium

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in mind, these eight artists address topics ranging from colonialism, to power dynamics, to disposal and regeneration.

"If I Could" installation at Deli Gallery, Image courtesy of the artist

Sarah Zapata established herself as one to watch with her installation "If I Could" at Deli Gallery last March. Born in 1988 in Corpus Christi, Texas, the Brooklyn-based, Peruvian-American artist utilizes traditional Andean and Peruvian hand practices of rug making and weaving to create vibrant, abstract textile works. Zapata utilizes these labor-intensive practices in order to examine her own cultural identity, in addition to reclaiming a medium that has historically been considered "women's work." Working with wall-hanging, sculpture, and installation, Zapata makes playfully tactile works that appear boundless, exuding beyond the constraints of the frame; and in some cases, as in "If I Could," visitors are invited to interact with the works under the condition that they are barefoot. For the installation (pictured above), Zapata invited poets and performers to embody the space, including artists Kayla Guthrie, Monica Mirabile, LA Warman, and Andrea Arrubla.

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206