As colors swiftly jump and dance about the gridded composition of the stop motion animation, the quilt block tapestry hangs motionless across the gallery.
The viewer can choose to engage at either a rapid or slow pace, both of which shift understanding in differing ways. The pace of the animation resists comprehension of form and relationships between the colors, while the scale and folding of the quilt block tapestry is too large to be viewed simultaneously. The ways these pieces resist complete recognition is contrasted against the exposure of the seams of the quilt block tapestry because what is typically hidden within the layers of a quilt is instead highlighted.
Square oil paintings that hang over the alcove also reference quilting through the use of the half square triangle, a foundational element common in many geometric quilting blocks. Here, a sense of improvisation and play are contrasted with subtle color relationships that are central to the construction and flow of the pieces.
The emphasis on relationships between colors and their movement through space throughout this installation is an expression of a border sensibility that is central to my lived experience in Texas and the United States. While sitting at my sewing machine piecing the colorful fabric, my mind can’t help but draw connections to the formation of this nation. I compare the length of the off-the-bolt fabric to one length of land, which is measured by surveyors’ tools and by my clear ruler and fabric pen, then cut by treaties and wars and by my rotary blade, which is then reconstituted by memory of the people and by the seam of my sewing machine, only to be flattened by political ideology and by my hot iron. This process continues until there is a nation and there is a quilt.
Artist bio
Michelle Inez Hinojosa is a Latina artist and educator from Texas. Her practice encompasses poetry, public art projects, painting, quilting, and tapestry bead weaving to share the complex, multigenerational, Latinx experience of migration, which is riddled with grief, delight, and displacement.
Hinojosa earned her MFA in Art at the University of Michigan in 2023. She earned her BFA in Art Education and Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas in 2018. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at The Pennsylvania State University in State College Pennsylvania, where she currently lives and works.As colors swiftly jump and dance about the gridded composition of the stop motion animation, the quilt block tapestry hangs motionless across the gallery.