Exhibition Statement

Many of us learned our craft first as a traditional technique; sometimes our grandparents taught us; or we learned them in formal education or training programs; some of us studied books or watched YouTube. Regardless of where we first learned fiber techniques, our own variations developed with time and practice.

Kira Dominguez Hultgren Juror’s Statement

Etymologically speaking, tradition shares the same Latin root, tradere, with words like trade, treason, and betrayal. Tradition is a handing over, giving up of information and practice. To say that tradition evolves is to emphasize the instability of that which we consider traditional. It is to cast the best light on the handing over of the handwork practices, social relationships, and material objects we hold dear to us. But it is precisely this evolution, this instability of past tradition, which allows us to engage and find hope in our present. Textiles allows us to re- handle, remake, retell our past into a future tradition.

When jurying this exhibition, I looked for work that exhibited this kind of hope, this kind of courage to step into an evolving future tradition. Youngmin Lee’s use of scrap fabric from face masks sewn at the beginning of the pandemic both embodies the tradition of jogakbo patchwork (reuse, windowpane geometric patterns), while telling a story of global urgency and individual response. Ruth Tabancay’s “Adapting to New Substrates 3.0” feels like an embroidery sampler that instead of capturing the past, glimpses a future we may yet live into. Dong Kyu Kim questions how identity and narratives are pieced together, consumed, and passed along, stitching a plaid of used face masks and receipts. Yudith Segev’s “Three Magical Trees” blurs the boundary of digital landscapes, using needle and mouse-clicks interchangeably to isolate and fill the image. All of the twenty-four artists in this digital exhibition point to a future of material and cultural instability, but with a certainty, a hope that their story, our story, is best told in the retelling, the redefinition, the evolving tradition.

Awardees

• 1st: Hope, Youngmin Lee
• 2nd: Adapting to New Substrates 3.0, Ruth Tabancay
• 3rd: Consuming Memories #14, Dong Kyu Kim
• SDA Award of Excellence: Three Magical Trees, Yudith Segev

Juror Talk / Award Winner’s Panel

August 21, 2022 at 11:00am PT via Zoom.

View recording of Juror Talk/Award Winners’ Panel

Online Gallery