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Tanya Aguiñiga: Craft & Care, 2018. Photo by Jenna Bascom.
Courtesy of Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

Connections, Collaboration & Change: A Lecture by Tanya Aguiñiga

Thursday, February 27, 2020
7pm – 9pm
Studio Theatre, Bill Boyle Artport
235 Queens Quay West

FREE

Tanya Aguiñiga is an artist whose practice seamlessly moves from sculpture to furniture; site-specific installation to performance; wearables to homegoods. She invigorates the language and methodologies of art, craft – predominately weaving – and design to generate dialogue and provocations highlighting identity, culture, gender, immigration and community.

Aguiñiga was raised in Tijuana, Mexico and crossed the border every day for 14 years to go to school in the United States. More than a “news story”, the U.S.-Mexico border is a lived experience for Aguiñiga. Her bi-national reality has resulted in her fluid relationship with identity that resonates throughout her art activism.

Aguiñiga will talk about her multi-dimensional practice, the integration of the personal and shared experience, the emotional power of collaboration and a life devoted to art as an impetus to make change.

– Melanie Egan, Director of Craft & Design, Harbourfront Centre

We want to thank OCAD for partnering with us for this event.

Making & Thinking: Contemporary Craft & Design Series

This dynamic series addresses current topics of significance and interest within the contemporary craft and design field by inviting artists, curators and writers who are spearheading contemporary thought and practice.

PROFILES

Tanya Aguiñiga ▸

Tanya Aguiñiga (b. 1978) is a Los Angeles based artist/designer/craftsperson who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. She holds an MFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from San Diego State University. In her formative years she created various collaborative installations with the Border Arts Workshop, an artists’ group that engages the languages of activism and community-based public art. Her current work uses craft as a performative medium to generate dialogues about identity, culture and gender while creating community. This approach has helped Museums and non-profits in the United States and Mexico diversify their audiences by connecting marginalized communities through collaboration.

Recent museum exhibitions include Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. and Craft and Care at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Aguiñiga is a United States Artists Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and Traditional Arts, a NALAC and Creative Capital Grant Awardee. She is the inaugural fellow for Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities. The award supported her creative work in communities throughout 2018 with AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of artist interventions and commuter collaborations that address bi-national transition and identity in the US/Mexico border regions, founded by Aguiñiga in 2016. AMBOS seeks to create a greater sense of interconnectedness while simultaneously documenting the United States / Mexico border.

Aguiñiga has been the subject of numerous articles for American Craft Magazine. She has been featured in PBS’s Craft in America Series, as well as in episodes of the Emmy® award-winning arts and cultures series, Artbound, from KCET. Her work is included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Decorative Arts collection and Contemporary Arts collection, as well as in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and The Mint Museum in Charlotte.

www.tanyaaguiniga.com