Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision
The work of contemporary fiber artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood ranges from quilted and embroidered wall hangings (Virgen de los Caminos, 1994), to rebozos (shawls) that celebrate heroes (Woody, My Dad, and Me, 2019) or address border issues (Rebozos de la Frontera, 2001), to flags that question the construction of nationality (Home of the Brave, 2013), to site-specific map-based installations (Undocumented Border Flowers, 2010). Currently out for review, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision is a co-edited collection of writings about Jimenez Underwood whose career spans over three decades. The anthology brings together voices from diverse fields to address the artist’s contributions to contemporary art, to political, social, and environmental perspectives on the U.S.-Mexico border, to women of color feminisms, and to the innovative strategies that re-write, re-vision, and re-imagine the mediums of weaving, fabric-making, and our current understanding of art. This panel presents three selections from the anthology that consciously engage with issues in art history, the interdisciplinary field of Latinx art histories, as well as Latinx visual cultural studies, and invites the audience to help direct the development of this research during the question and answer period. This portion of the anthology traces the history of fiber art and the artist’s place within these histories, provides a discussion of Jimenez Underwood’s most well-known installation project Borderlines using Chicana feminist theory, Critical Race theory, and art historical methodology, and surveys a five-year period of the artist’s exhibitions locating these works within the frame of Chela Sandoval’s theory of oppositional consciousness.
Field of Study:
Chair:
Ann Marie Leimer,Midwestern State University - ann.leimer@msutexas.edu
Discussant:
Laura E. Perez,University of California, Berkeley - leperez@berkeley.edu
