Abbey Muza
Abbey Muza uses weaving and other forms of image-making to explore narration, identity, and abstraction. They have been an artist in residence at ACRE and Alternative Worksite, and have been a Fulbright France Harriet-Hale Wooley Fellow in the Arts, a Leroy Neiman Fellow at the Oxbow School of Art, and a visiting artist at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Their recent solo and two-person shows include exhibitions at Tusk (Chicago), Slow Dance (Chicago), and the Fondation des États Unis (Paris). Their awards include an Individual Artist Program grant from the city of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, an Illuminate the Arts grant from the city of Philadelphia, and an Arthur King Peters Award from Fulbright France. They have a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. They currently live between Chicago and Paris.
Portrait by Patricia Zheng
Artist Statement
I am interested in the specificities inherent in textile objects - for example, how image and content can be imbued into a textile, or the uniqueness of a textile object’s relationship to ways of seeing and being in the world. My curiosities are as follows: How can one “read” a textile? How do text and image engage with textiles, both as contemporary and historical mediums? What can a textile be, and what can we do with it as an art object? My work is variously image- or text- based and abstract. These images and texts are woven into draped or hung tapestries, and often come from assembled and found imagery. The content of my work becomes abstract, either through the process of weaving or via intentional opacity. In particular, too, I explore how queer or queered histories can be retold through woven cloth in relationship to textile’s ‘othered’ art historical positioning, which situates the textile object as a natural encoding device for little told or excluded narratives.
At Tusen Takk
At Tusen Takk, I will make a series of pochoir-printed and painted woven textiles that consider how narratives are imparted via textiles’ relationship to the body. I aim to impart “touch” through the composition of images embedded into the handwoven textiles during the process of making, while also investigating the relationship between cloth and the body. Using my own or found photographic images of “touch,” I will make collaged compositions for each work. I will turn these compositions into pochoir stencils used to paint unwoven threads. As I weave these threads, the images will break apart, shift, and come back together, rebuilt into new compositions.
Instagram: @abbeymuza
