Tag: Neha Puri Dhir

Art Out and About: Exhibitions Here and Abroad

It’s September and it’s not just schools that are opening their doors. Tanned, rested and ready — museums and galleries like browngrotta arts are presenting fall events. Here’s a round up of some fiber events to view in the next few months.

NYTM
New York Textile Month
New York City and nearby locations
https://www.textilemonth.nyc

In New York, it’s NYTM — New York Textile Month.  That means range of activities — talks, films, studio visits, workshops, an in-window exhibition at Bergdorf Goodman, exhibitions at Mana Contemporary and elsewhere, and Eva Hesse’s Expanded Expansion at the Guggenheim — all celebrating textile art, making and conservation. Check out the NYTM website for suggestions, times, and dates.

Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6: Kyoko Kumai
Through November 6, 2022
Nakahechi Museum of Art
891 Kinro Nakahechi-machi
Tanabe-shi Wakayama-ken Japan
Tel; 0739-65-0390 
https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/en/events/-/2022%2Fcontemporary-weaving-artist-series-vi-kyoko-kumai

Detail of Memory, Kyoko Kumai, stainless steel filaments, 41” x 19” x 19”, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Since 2017, Tanabe City Museum of Art has been presenting Contemporary Weaving, an exhibition series that showcases outstanding contemporary weavers who create world-class works by combining traditional and unique materials and techniques with new weaving expressions that reflect the times. This year’s Contemporary Weaving Artist Series 6 features the art of Kyoko Kumai (1943), who has expanded the world of weaving through her innovative use of metallic threads, and continues to develop a variety of expressions that evoke light and wind.

Intellectual Beauty
2nd International Exhibition of Textile Art and Mixed Media
Museu Textil 
September 1 – February 28, 2022
Virtual
https://www.museutextil.com

Vessel from Intellectual Beauty by Jeannet Leenderste. Photo by Jeannet Leenderste

Rodrigo Franzao founded a fully envisioned virtual museum that focuses on the work of artists who “use textile strategies as support for their creations.” For Intellectual Beauty, Fanzao has gathered 43 artists from 18 countries, who have used their “sensitive reality to introduce to the beholder the sensorial perceptions of a reality emancipated from rules and theory, free and absorbed by inspiration.” You can view the entire exhibition, 116 artworks, including two by Jeannet Leenderste, online.

Contextile 2022
September 3 – October 31, 2022
Guimarães, Portugal

Landscape Here West, by Åse Ljones from the Intellectual Beauty exhibition. Photo by Helge Hansen.
Anthropocene by Neha Puri Dhir from Contextile 2022. Photo by Neha Puri Dhir.

Contextile 2022 – Contemporary Textile Art Biennial celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year. The exhibition features 57 works by 50 artists from 34 countries chosen for their high creativity, originality and technical competence around the textile element, by construction, theme, concept or material used, as well as their adherence to the concept of Contextile 2022: RE-MAKE.  Among the artists included are Neha Puri Dhir of India. In addition, the Contextile organizers selected Norway as its invited country and are presenting work from 13 Norwegian textile artists including Åse Ljones.

X International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, “25 Years World Textile Art”
From November 3rd to December 15th, 2022
Miami International Fine Art (MIFA)
5900 NW 74th Ave
Miami, FL 33166
Colombia Consulate
280 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134

https://wta-online.org/blog/x-biennial-of-contemporary-textile-art-wta-25-years/

This year 2022, WTA celebrates its 25th anniversary with the X International Biennial “25 YEARS WTA”, from October through December 2022. For the 10 th Biennial, more than ten countries will be interconnected to celebrate WTA history through salons featuring 25 artists each. A number of artists will have worked displayed in connection with this exhibition including Anneke Klein.

Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries
October 8-16, 2022
browngrotta arts
Wilton, Connecticut
http://www.browngrotta.com/Pages/calendar.php

Detail of River by Jolanta Owidzka, 1978 and Ultima Copper, Green, Orange vessels by Gertrud Hals, 2021. Photo by Tom Grotta.

Mindful of the impact that poitical events can have on artists and their art, browngrotta arts will present to work of nearly 50 artists from 21 NATO-related countries in Europe whose work reflects diverse perspectives and experiences. Allies for Art: Work from NATO-related countries (October 8 – 16, 2022) will include art created under occupation, in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, art by those who left Hungary, Spain and Romania while occupied, and who left Russia in later years, including Jolanta Owidzka, Zofia Butrymowicz, and Krystyna Wojtyna-Drouet of Poland and Luba Krejci and Jan Hladik of Czechoslovakia, Ceca Georgieva of Bulgaria, Gyöngy Laky (Hungary/US), Ritzi Jacobi (Romania/Germany), Adela Akers (Spain/US), Aleksandra Stoyanov (Ukraine/Israel) and Irina Kolineskova (Russia/Germany). Allies for Art will also include recently created art by artists living in Europe, including works by Gudrun Pagter of Denmark, Åse Ljones of Norway, Ulla-Maija Vikman of Finland, Heidrun Schimmel of Germany, Lilla Kulka and Włodmierz Cygan of Poland, and, five artists new to browngrotta arts, including, Esmé Hofman of the Netherlands, Aby Mackie of Spain and Baiba Osite of Latvia.

Reserve your space on Eventbrite.


art + identity: Who’s New? Neha Puri Dhir and Nnenna Okore

Zazen, Neha Puri Dhir, resist dye, silk,, 41” x 41”, 2015. Photo by Tom Grotta.

We are excited to be including four artists new to browngrotta arts in art + identity: an international view. They include Neha Puri Dhir of India and Nnenna Okore who grew up and studied in Nigeria and now lives in the US.


Neha Puri Dhir‘s textile study has also been broad-based, including time at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, studies in Italy, Latvia, the UK and a workshop with Americans Yoshiko Wada and Jack Larsen. Dhir has intentionally explored a variety of textile techniques, developing a particular appreciation for shibori and stitch resist. “More than the means,” she told Hand/Eye magazine, “It is the story that fascinates me. It is enchanting to know the origin of these age-old Japanese techniques. Unconsciously, and interestingly, similar resist-dyeing techniques were taking birth in various corners of the world — bandhini in India and adire from Nigeria. These traditional crafts were changing hands from one generation to another and unknowingly developing a pedagogy.”

A closer look at Dhir’s Zazen

Dhir has experimented with this meticulous and labor-intensive technique, sourcing her fabrics from various parts of India and using machine stitch instead of hand to achieve something not otherwise possible. Dhir’s design philosophy has been influenced by the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sari, centred on the acceptance of impermanence and imperfection. 

Ashioke, Nnenna Okore, burlap, ceramic, 28” x 35” x 4”, 2007


Born in Australia and raised in Nigeria, Nnenna Okore has received international acclaim for her richly textured abstract sculptures and installations. Her breathtaking works explore the fragility and ephemerality of terrestrial existence. Her highly tactile sculptures respond to the rhythms and contours of everyday life, combining reductive methods of shredding, fraying, twisting and teasing with constructive processes of tying, weaving, stitching and dyeing. Also, informing her aesthetics are familiar sounds of sweeping, chopping, talking and washing, processes that reflect the transience of human labor and its inevitable mark on the material world.

“…My processes of fraying, tearing, teasing, weaving, dyeing, waxing, accumulating and sewing allow me to interweave and synthesize the distinct properties of materials,…[M]uch like impermanent earthly attributes, my organic and twisted structures mimic the dazzling intricacies of fabric, trees, barks, topography and architecture. All my processes are adapted or inspired by traditional women’s practice, the African environment, third-world economies and recycled waste.”

Details in Okore’s Ashioke


Okore is a Professor of Art at Chicago’s North Park University, where she chairs the Art department and teaches courses in Art Theory and Sculptural Practices. She earned her B.A degree in Painting from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (First Class Honors) in 1999, and subsequently received her MA and MFA at the University of Iowa, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Okore spent a year as an apprentice in El Anatsui’s studio in Nigeria.

The opening of art + identity: an international view is at browngrotta arts, 276 Ridgefield Road, Wilton, CT 06897, Saturday, April 27th from 1 pm to 6 pm. Sunday the 28th through Sunday May 5th, the exhibition hours are 10 am to 5 pm. For the complete list of the more than 50 artists who are participating, visit our calendar page HERE.


Artists on Anni Albers’ Enduring Influence

10 Lines 11 Lines 17 Lines 25 Squares, Kay Sekimachi, 6” x 6” each linen, polyester warp, permanent marker, 2017

As we noted in our last two blog posts, Anni Albers has been a profound influence for artists worldwide. Albers’ ability to combine the ancient craft of hand weaving with the language of modern art, finding within the two a multitude of ways to express modern life, led her to inspire numerous artists, from browngrotta arts, including Sue Lawty who wrote about her Albers’ influence on arttextstyle last week.

Fellow weaver and fiber artist Kay Sekimachi loved both Albers’ work and writings. When discussing Albers’ weaving method Sekimachi quoted Albers’ admonition, “You just have to listen to the threads,” adding, “that’s what keeps me going.” Sekimachi says that Albers’ book On Designing has served as her weaving “bible.”

Neha Puri Dhir

Neha Puri Dhir, an India-based textile artist, whose captivating geometric-based work will be featured in our upcoming Art in the Barn exhibition, Art + Identity: an international view, has also been influenced by Albers. “I have always found Anni’s work as a modernist textile artist revolutionary. Her work has a visual language of simple and direct compositions which has deeply influenced my art practice.” Dhir believes the way in which she expresses interactions of colors and forms as simple compositions in her own work has been unconsciously inspired by Albers. Dhir has embodied Albers’ step-by-step approach to exploration, making that the underlying sensibility of her art practice.

Eduardo Portillo & Mariá Eugenia Dávila at the Albers Foundation

Mariá Dávila and Eduardo Portillo have approached Anni Albers’ legacy with intention. In late 2018, the couple spent a month at the Josef and Anni Albers’ Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut. The Foundation maintains two residential studios for visiting artists who exemplify the seriousness of purpose that characterized both Anni and Josef Albers. The residencies are designed to provide time, space, and solitude, with the benefit of access to the Foundation’s archives and library. The couple wrote to us a few times during their stay.Today we were at the Albers archive, we found the notes for the Annie’s book On Weaving and were very near to some of her works — a special day. Now our days are very intense, daytime for the Library, nighttime for the Studio. During these days we have been devoted almost completely to study Josef’s and Anni’s work and thoughts. It has been very helpful in understanding our own process. We are not working on the loom now, you will find us surrounded by books and  draft papers.”

When we visited them in Bethany in December, they told us:”The silence and the beauty here is a gift. Our lives at home are so busy and so intense that it is hard to focus and think about our work and its direction. Here, we are living an almost monastic life, studying and thinking nearly full-time spurred by the example of the Albers who were remarkably prolific.”

New Nebula, Eduardo Portillo & Mariá Eugenia Dávila , silk, alpaca, moriche palm fiber dyed with Indigo, rumex spp, onion, eucalyptus, acid dyes, copper and metallic yarns, 74” x 49.25”, 2017


“The Foundation has thousands of works, which they are cataloging. Anni’s loom is here, but we did not come here to
weave, but to think and study. We are very interested in her pictorial works — where she tried to embody something tangible, like the sun or a landscape, metaphorically, in a weaving.”

“This place is unique, educating, mutating, extraordinary — so many adjectives you could choose. Anni opened the door for people to think about textiles differently. Now, with the Tate exhibition, she will open doors again.”

And on reflection, when the residency was nearly over: “Just a sentence, a few of her words, has been enough to enlighten our path. Her clear vision on how a weave is created allows us to transit with confidence to experimentation through the threads and the interchange that exists between ideas and materials. Revisiting her work makes us witnesses to her legacy.”