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Johanna Unzueta

Armory 2022






    
    






Hilar, tejer, teñir (to spin, to weave, and to dye), are foundational skills learnt by Johanna Unzueta as the young apprentice of an indige- nous Mapuche woman in rural southern Chile, the artist’s home country. These competencies— the act of spinning, weaving, and dyeing woolen fiber through natural pigment processes — still inform her practice and overall understanding of certain notions of labor.





Unzueta’s production includes sculpture, drawing, video, performative actions, and objects made of cardboard and textile. Through these materials, the objects, and their presentation within specific architectural spaces and landscapes, Unzueta proposes a reflection on issues related to labor, its technological and historical unfolding and its impact on the human condition. Unzueta masterfully uses wool as a central marker and “thread” of this discussion. Her “handcrafted” approach implicates dialogue with the historical context of industrialization, its relationship to production, relevance for modernity, and economic and social impact.





Expanding on her previous work, her drawings are presented in displays resembling the exhibition design of architect Lina Bo Bardi, as free-standing drawings mounted into bases of recycled wooden beams. They are created through a process that can include dyeing the paperwith indigo, fustic, or other natural pigments, and puncturing the paper with needle holes. To create the shapes, Unzueta uses embroidery hoops from her collection of hundreds. The final results are delicate oval, circular, and geometric forms activated by light and conveying the sensibility of textiles. Through these subtle to complex gestures, Unzueta inscribes traces indigenous craft practices into the history of art, disrupting distinctions between art and craft practices into the history of art, disrupting distinctions between art and craft, the traditional and the contemporary, while maintaining a critical engagement with the idea of progress, notions of labor, and their implications for human existence. Moreover, her artistic interventions open and carry forward a dialogue with the history of geometric abstraction and conceptualism in Latin America.





— Fabiana Lopes