Charged Objects: The Multivalent Fiber Art of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

My research brings together aspects of various conceptual and material histories that Consuelo Jimenez Underwood draws upon in her work. These threads of history include the international fiber arts movement of the 1960s and 70s, the feminist art movement in Southern California, and her responses to and understanding of materials and their meanings. The artist carries forward a notion of making associated with craft that simultaneously moves beyond it to a politicized art that disrupts silence. Jimenez Underwood follows in the footsteps of artists who engaged with the women’s liberation movement and who frequently chose craft and domestic materials in order to protest and effect social change through installations, performances, and large art works. Feminist art exploded in Southern California beginning in 1970 with the first women’s art class at California State University, Fresno, followed later that year by the founding of the influential Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts. Textiles, particularly historically documented and familiar objects such as clothing, tablecloths, embroideries, and quilts, form the basis of Jimenez Underwood’s method. She has developed a complex reference system in woven and stitched materials and marks their compliant surface with distinct signs and symbols that disrupt their passivity to reveal a rebellious intent. Through the materials of cloth and thread that have an uncertain and oscillating status in the art world, her works refute narrow beliefs about art’s role in society and produce multivalent responses that reshape the world.