By Patricia Miranda
Located in Darien, CT
Patricia Miranda's work includes interdisciplinary installation, textile, paper and books. The textiles incorporated in these new pieces are vintage linens from her Italian and Irish grandmothers and sourced from friends and strangers around the country. Each donation is documented and integrated into the work. Textile as a form that wraps the body from cradle to grave. The role of lacemaking in the lives of women both economically and historically is packed with metaphorical potential. The relationship of craft and women’s work (re)appropriated by artists today to environmental and social issues is integral to the artist's research.
Her work is process oriented; materials are submerged in natural dyes from oak gall wasp nests, cochineal insects, turmeric, indigo, and clay. She forages for raw materials, cook dyes, grind pigments, ecofeminist actions that consider environmental impacts of objects. The process is left visible as dyestuff is unfiltered in the vat and finished work. Sewn into larger works, Miranda incorporates hair, pearls, bone beads, Milagros, cast plaster. The distinct genetics and environmental and cultural history of each material asserts its voice as collaborator rather than medium.
The lace inserts a visceral femininity into the pristine gallery, and exerts a ghostly trace of the history of domestic labor. The combination of earth and lace references human and environmental devastation and the conflation of nature and women’s bodies as justifications for exploitation. Mournful and solastalgic, they are lamentations to the violence against women and the earth.
Patricia Miranda is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and founder of The Crit Lab, graduate-level critique seminars and Residency for artists, and MAPSpace project space. She has been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah; and been awarded residencies at I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio.
She received an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Artist Relief Grant, an artist grant from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts, and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth.
Miranda currently teaches graduate curatorial studies at Western Colorado University, and develops programs for K-12, museums, and institutions such as Franklin Furnace.
Her work has been exhibited at ODETTA, NYC; ABC No Rio, NYC; Alexey von...
Category
2010s Feminist Fabric Sculptures
MaterialsFabric, Thread, Plaster, Dye, Found Objects
