Curatorial Statement
Through this body of work, I created a coherent presentation of fiber art inspired by current controversial issues. My pieces impact my audience to acknowledge and add further thought to what I perceived as the tangled complication of current controversial issues. Each piece conveys some of the main issues that have occurred during my time in IB Visual Arts. The issues included in this exhibition are portrayed through the following works: gay marriage (“The Tangled States of America”), politics (“Tangled Political Parties”), the refugee crisis (“Open Door?”), illegal immigration (“Defining Borders”), holidays (“Happy Holidays”), the national debt (“The Chains of our National Debt”), and gun control (“Gun Control”). I was focused on creating sculptural works for this exhibition. In the first five pieces I created, I used the media of yarn through the manipulation techniques of single-chain crochet and entanglement. The last two pieces are a shift towards crocheting with wire combined with simple puppet figures. My work conceptually demonstrates the connection between tangled media and tangled issues. After exploring these issues, I thought about possible compositions, and chose the colors of yarn used in each project accordingly. I exhibited my artwork chronologically in order for my exhibition to serve as a timeline of controversial issues highlighted over this past year. The timeline begins June 26, 2015 when the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the court case Obergefell v. Hodges. The timeline continues with the beginnings of the US 2016 presidential race. On November 13, 2015 there were terrorist attacks in Paris, France. This event increased terror fears worldwide, and specifically in the US this led to the issue of letting Syrian refugees into the country. I portrayed this issue in the piece, “Open Door?”, because 31 state governors had refused to let Syrian refugees into their states. For the remainder of the timeline, I focused on the “tangled” issues of illegal immigration, December holidays, the US national debt, and gun control. The gun control issue became more prevalent in January 2016 when President Obama took executive action to reduce gun violence. Exhibiting my works chronologically allowed for the each piece to represent the documentation of controversial topic issues highlighted during 2015-2016.