"Punctures: Textiles in Digital and Material Time /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

Punctures: Textiles in Digital and Material Time

Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center
617 Main Street
Buffalo, NY, 14203

September 20, 2019–February 7, 2020

Squeaky Wheel is pleased to announce Punctures: Textiles in Digital and Material Time. Drawing from the little-known but expansive history connecting media arts and textile production, the exhibition features artists invested in the material, critical and liberatory politics of their intersections.

From the Lumière brothers taking the intermittent motion of a sewing machine to create the cinematograph, to the punch cards of the Jacquard loom forming the basis of modern computation, and the role of sewing and gendered labor in jobs like editing and dyeing in film production, textile production remains an essential, but insufficiently unacknowledged formal and social influence on media arts. These underpinnings aim to not only explicate an alternate history, but are meant to find ways to speculate new futures for media practice.

Consisting of three exhibitions and public programs that weave into each other, audiences will engage with artworks exploring a wide range of practices including, trans fashion and domesticity; gendered and immigrant labor under global racial capitalism; Gelede women’s commemoration, protest and power as represented in textile work; speculative future-casting through Oglala Lakota knowledge systems, and more.

The exhibition features installations by Betty Yu, Cecilia Vicuña, Charlie Best, Eniola Dawodu, Kite, and Sabrina Gschwandtner, performances by Charlie Best, Jodi Lynn Maracle, and Kite, screenings of work by Jodie Mack, Sabrina Gschwandtner, and Wang Bing, and guest speakers such as Jasmina Tumbas and Jolene Rickard.

COLA Award opening /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

COLA 2019 exhibition May 23 – July 14, 2019
Opening reception: May 19, 2 – 5 PM

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is pleased to present COLA 2019, an exhibition featuring new work by Enrique Castrejon, Juan Capistrán, Kim Fisher, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Katie Grinnan, Alice Könitz, Olga Koumoundouros, Sandy Rodriguez, Stephanie Taylor, Peter Wu and Jenny Yurshansky. These eleven artists are the recipients of the 2019 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship for visual arts. The Fellows were selected by a panel comprising curators, educators, museum directors and past COLA Fellows. The fellowship provides each artist with $10,000 to produce a new body of work, which will be premiered at the COLA 2019 exhibition. “COLA Fellows are the types of unique civic entrepreneurs that we need in this city,” said DCA General Manager Danielle Brazell. “DCA is proud to honor these creative visionaries and nurture their symbiotic relationships with LA and other artists and the city’s history and identity as an international arts capital.” The exhibition will be accompanied by a public program as well as a catalog.

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery 4800 Hollywood Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90027

Permanent public art project on view in the Bronx /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

My first permanent public art project is now up at elementary school PS 583 in the Bronx.
“KAP Above 1029 White Plains Rd, Bronx, NY” is a collage of 49 photographs inspired by a technique called kite aerial photography (KAP). The piece includes photographs I took using cameras suspended from kites and balloons during a 2 year period while the school was constructed. My site-specific, local images were mixed with internet-sourced KAPs from around the world and archival Marshall Islands navigation charts from the Smithsonian Institution. The images were printed onto glass panels by Mayer of Munich. Size: 12 x 12 x 17 feet. 

“Weaving Europe: the World as Meditation" on view in Greece /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

What can the historical language of weaving offer to modern visual art practices, like digital technology, new media and Internet art? This exhibition explores female labor and the role of women in the history of art. Comparing weaving to Plato’s political philosophy, the metaphor of “Weaving Europe” poses the issue of European identity and its construction and the need to examine the threads that “weave” Europe.
The project includes international artists whose work involves the use of new media and digital technologies. It also includes lectures and discussions, workshops about knitting as a form of therapy, film and documentary screenings, and a catalog. 

Participating Artists: Κimsooja, Johan Grimonperz, Cat Mazza, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Cristina Lucas, Loukia Alavanou, Eva Borner, Francesca Fini, Anne Wilson, Janis Jefferis, Diane Wood Conroy, Sarah-Joy Ford, Νikos Gyftakis, Anastasia Mina, Christos Avraam, Yiannis Sakellis, Kyriakos Kousoulides, Anna Lytridou, Michalis Charalambous, Eleni Nicodemou, Erato Hadjisavva.

Curator – Concept: Efi Kyprianidou