Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s most recent exhibition, The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married, opened at Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago, Illinois during the beginning of the US lockdown precipitated by the world wide spread of COVID-19.
Guerrero-Maciá explains that “the title of the show refers to a Cuban folk idiom often told to me by my parents describing a sun shower that often results in a rainbow. In English – “When the sun is shining and it’s raining, the devil’s daughter is getting married.”
Where opposing conditions meet – lies the potential for something beautiful, like a rainbow.
For this body of work – I asked myself - Is a rainbow a picture? How do materials speak in pictures? And how do we see pictures, over long periods of time? These works are optimistic answers for complicated times.
My artwork at the intersections of textiles & painting conceptually reevaluates material making and inclusion within art. These artworks are collaged, pieced, dyed, and stitched as a reconsideration of the field and form. Constructed from hand-dyed canvas & upcycled textiles – including hand sewn cutter-quilts, US Army blankets, wool jackets, suits, & dresses – all deconstructed, flattened, & stitched by hand unto raw canvas.
For me, gathering textiles reveals our consumption—it talks about the market, experiences, and access. How was this textile produced? who made it and for what purpose? Everything is given equal value on my fields of canvas. I put textiles together from different sources as a way to aligning my understandings of histories and lived practice of the people who touched these – either a hand made quilt made for a loved one, a discarded garment found in a thrift shop, my mother’s own vintage embroidery, or a standard issue army blanket. I strive to make visually compelling artworks with a timeless and searching quality, looking to the future for a possible resolution of the discrepancies and inequalities within the field of art & craft and in our broader world for immigrants and migrants and those outside the mainstream powers that be. The moment, revealed in each cloth, compiled over time, multiplied over years, folded into an abstraction, holds time and records its passage.”
Diana Guerrero-Maciá has exhibited widely and created several public art commissions for the Public Art Fund, NYC & Chicago. She is a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award winner and multiple MacDowell Colony Fellow. Guerrero-Maciá received fellowships at both Skowhegan and Penland. She is a Professor in Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and represented by Traywick Contemporary, and Carrie Secrist Gallery.
For more information, please see: http://www.guerrero-macia.com, and on Instagram @diana.guerrero.macia.
Diana Guerrero-Maciá, The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married, 2020. Wool, Dye, deconstructed clothing and textiles on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
Thanks for asking—We are bearing witness to a massive & necessary change happening and the totality of that unto one person is hard to explain. Like many artists, I am finding it hard to concentrate and to find meaningful expression. I am figuring out on a daily basis what to share with our 10-year old son who knows the world is on fire and is trying to find his young voice at the same time. He cares deeply about justice, but as a kid, he just desperately wants to play with another kid amidst the chaos. I’m trying to give him that.
The upside is, we are all ok and healthy and under one roof. There are days that are exhausting and others that are ideal. It is full spectrum living. As a professor, I can work from home and we just finished the semester. Remote teaching a studio practice is very challenging; its not ideal and it is very difficult for the students – it does reveal their privileges and that is something we all need to work on. We are going to have to get comfortable with this new model though, and I see benefits of hybrid learning.
Diana Guerrero-Maciá at work in the studio. Image courtesy of the artist.
It's my experience that most artists engage with some level of self-isolation in their day to day art practice. Has this been your experience? And if so, have you found these innate rhythms to be helpful during this larger, world-wide experience of isolation?
Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet- “a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.” My husband is a professional musician and we both need time to bury ourselves into our creative worlds. I think artists who engage with a studio practice are uniquely qualified for quarantine. I am lucky to have a partner and kid I love, so I’m never really alone. Although, as parents, solitude usually happens when our kid is in school. During quarantine everything has changed. We are often in triage mode, and not much creative personal work gets done. We have been fixing a lot of things around the house; making things better, chores that have long been abandoned are now creative family projects. We are growing in a different way.
Detail image of The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married, 2020. Wool, Dye, deconstructed clothing and textiles on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
I believe painting is a verb, like craft and is a way of thinking. I make hybrid works of art for very deliberate reasons – I want to assert the value of textiles and those corresponding material cultures within the paradigm of painting.
Detail image of Born in the Sixties, 2020. Wool, deconstructed clothing, and vintage wooden pentagon toys on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection to what's currently happening? Or are you considering using coronavirus related imagery for future projects? Do you find it necessary to make work about the pandemic? And why, or why not?
My work is rooted in the knowledge that art making is a timeless practice. I know I will continue making material grid-based abstractions with color and texture - out of deconstructed textiles and used blankets & quilts. The social component embedded in my years of work through textiles is so relevant today. – my work speaks to the market and the supply chains of textiles – how was this textile produced (hand made or mass produced?) For the military industrial complex, for the bed of a loved one, or for fast fashion consumption? – all together mixed up, folded into an abstraction, because that is how we are all living. Form is not content-less. Form, for me, has always been a powerful metaphoric way to get at the falsehoods & truths in this moment. Who made this textile and who used it and in what conditions? How far did it travel to get somewhere only to be discarded? Every textile has so many people, animals, time, and economies embedded into it. It’s a global story and so is this pandemic. My work has always had this ethos and I understand the larger supply networks and human connection; this moment has reaffirmed my broader interests.
Detail image of The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married, 2020. Wool, Dye, deconstructed clothing and textiles on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
Are you thinking differently? Coping differently? Inspired differently?
Opening a major solo show during the first day of quarantine, without anybody seeing it in real-life has been quite a paradigm shift for me.
It is my biggest wish that the work will be seen in the future and I would love to show the work together again somewhere. It is very strong work and looks amazing as a whole. But I believe art is alive and it will have a place in the future. Right now, I’m taking time to empty out my studio & brain to make both physical and mental space for what’s coming next. I try to make work from an effortless place, by feeling the ideas first then letting them come out in the studio. Working this way let’s me enjoy the practice and that makes me feel good - but that’s not any different from how I usually work.
What do you think or hope will be different after this crisis has passed?
Within art - I’m hoping this will bring a renewed interest in the intimate, slowly made objects of smaller scale and less about the spectacle, waste, and massive scale that art institutions have needed to support in order to capture the attention of the fickle art market.
Guerrero-Maciá with a scale model of Carrie Secrist Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
My dog, Coco. My daily walks with her are not new to this pandemic. Walking is part of my art practice.
What research or writing are you doing that you find compelling?
I’m taking an open course offered to non-Black academics by Black Academics for Black survival and wellness. It is a weeklong personal and professional development initiative to honor the toll of racial trauma on Black people, resist anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and facilitate accountability and collective action. We all need to change this.
What are you reading?
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power and Black Refractions from the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Guerrero-Maciá in the studio with Coco. Image courtesy of the artist.