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Hellen Ascoli

Liste Art Fair Basel 2021

Hellen Ascoli and Manuel Mendoza Sanchez
in collaboration with Embajada

Hellen Ascoli’s multidisciplinary approach to art making derives from an active engagement with weaving, movement, listening, and writing, which she applies to an exploration of the political relationship between
body, object, and environment. Working primarily with the backstrap loom—a tool that attaches to the body of its user and to the space in which they are working —Ascoli generates ideas and experiences that are rooted in place, and which are therefore contextual and relational. “Each weave is intimately related to the body it harnesses,” she writes. “Its warp is the width of my hips, its length mirrors my height, its designs are spaced by the threads I can hold in my hand… It carries memory through touch, a proximity sense. I choose to use materials that reveal vestiges of bodies
that were once there.”