MFA Fine Arts presents "The Craftswomen," curated by current student Sarah Malekzadeh. The show will be held at the SVA Flatiron Project Space, 133/141 West 21st Street from Monday, March 5, through Thursday, March 29, with an opening reception on Thursday, March 15, from 6:00 – 8:00pm.

When an artwork is described as craft-like, it is often as an attempt to diminish it or pay less for it, as craft-making is usually the arena of women. We are experiencing a craft renaissance, with women demanding to be taken seriously via the techniques and materials passed down from their female relatives and distant ancestors.

"The Craftswomen" will showcase a diverse range of bold, unapologetic craft. Handmade dolls hang from balloons, naturally dyed indigenous garments are used in a risk-taking performance, quilts become paintings and yarn is baked into bread. Despite their vast differences in materials and execution, each artist in this show inherently has something to say about womanhood by alluding to craft. The diversity in "The Craftswomen" is a testament to the enduring traditions and the exciting future possibilities of craft as an art form that is treated with the respect it deserves.

Artists:

Isabel Llugano studied Visual Arts at the Ponticifia Universidad Católica del Ecuador from 2010 to 2014. She wants to understand and change the world around her through artistic practice. She feels that, as a woman, she cannot be indifferent to her heteronormative context and the remaining gender inequality that affects all of us.

Dana Robinson is a multimedia artist from Florida, who graduated with a BFA from Florida State University. Using paint, fabric and, more recently, digital platforms, Robinson illustrates the ability to be youthful regardless of age and the endless freedom that is embroiled in that prospect. Her ability to combine and recombine the everyday objects that blend into the background of our lives allows the intended purpose of these to be broken, realigned and set into new meanings.

Alicia Smith is a Xicana artist and activist. She received her BFA in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Contemporary Sculpture and Printmaking from the University of Oklahoma. Her work uses the abject and sublime to investigate certain ideas. She is interested in the tension between greed and reverence and its impact on the environment, as well as our relationship to the female body. Through these processes, she dissolves romanticized tropes that deny indigenous women their complexity, while at the same time demonstrating their beauty and strength. Being of mixed-race heritage, her relationship to the land and her body is complicated and something she unpacks through her work with the guidance of her ancestors.

Shannon Stovall has a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is interested in exploring our projected ideal personas and their deeply rooted history in the performance of gender, sexuality and the societal norms that control them. Stovall would describe her style as narrative realism, with a touch of the surreal. Lately, she has been interested in the conversation between inanimate objects and the animate body.

Exhibition

The Craftswomen

SVA Flatiron Project Space

Reception