Textile Art: Spinning the Political with Ancestral Practicies

The Aluna Art Foundation is hosting a talk with fiber artists Pip Brant, Aurora Molina, and Evelyn Politzer, moderated by Adriana Herrera, cofounder of Aluna Art Foundation. They will discuss politically-charged fiber arts and ways of exploring the relationship between gender, history, and fiber ancestral traditions and their relationship with contemporary textile art. The talk has been organized in partnership with Threading the City, a fusion of the Fiber Artist Miami Association (FAMA), the World Textile Art (WTA), local art curators, and art historians. FAMA Fiber Artists have been using textiles for confronting subjects that include migration, and other political topics.

Brant grew up on the western Plains Indian reservations (Sioux, Cheyenne, Assiniboine), and degrees from the University of Montana (BFA) and the University of Wyoming (MFA). She has taught, herded goats and produced art in Montana, Wyoming, London, England, and Missouri, and is currently an associate professor at FIU, teaching painting and fibers.

Molina received her Associates of Arts in Visual Arts from Miami Dade College, a Bachelors in Fine Arts specializing in Mixed Media from Florida International University and Master Degree in Contemporary Art at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. Using the tools of embroidery, sculpture-making, drawing, photography, and video, she uses the potential of fiber art to communicate ideas about social and political issues.

Politzer is a fiber artist looking to convey nature’s plea for interconnectedness through yarn, thread, and fabric. Using traditional methods like knitting, crochet, and embroidery, she creates unconventional objects, from small 2D tapestries to monumental sculptural forms. She obtained her MFA in Visual Arts at Miami International University of Art and Design.

This program is free to attend, and visitors must mention at the entrance they are visiting for the talk. The exhibition and related programming are funded in part through a Florida Humanities Community Project Grant in partnership with the Aluna Art Foundation.