Consuelo Jimenez Underwood American, b. 1949
Guns and Stripes, 2008
Tapestry. Wire, linen, cotton, and synthetic threads
18 x 7.5 in
23.5 x 13.5 in frame size
23.5 x 13.5 in frame size
What would be stars in the U.S. flag are replaced in this sliver of a flag with woven guns, taking up half the space of the entire tapestry and visually...
What would be stars in the U.S. flag are replaced in this sliver of a flag with woven guns, taking up half the space of the entire tapestry and visually dominating the area. Guns here represent the legacy of colonialism which still lingers along the border and throughout the Americas. With the violence of colonialism in plain sight, it becomes easier to confront, dismantle, and change.
Jimenez Underwood's flags, maps, and tortillas represent a political strategy to dismantle colonial legacies still active in the US-Mexico borderland and the Americas. As the artist states: "Art can shower the nation with power and grace. Art can liberate society from old modes of perception." Her fiber art emerges from an anti-colonial struggle against cultural and intellectual domination, serving as a strategy for "decolonizing the imagination"- to use Emma Perez's term- and for liberating spiritual energies, which the artist accesses by shifting the frame of reference or by creating new contexts through which to view the familiar." Clara Roman-Odio, "Flags, the Sacred, and a Different America," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022
Jimenez Underwood's flags, maps, and tortillas represent a political strategy to dismantle colonial legacies still active in the US-Mexico borderland and the Americas. As the artist states: "Art can shower the nation with power and grace. Art can liberate society from old modes of perception." Her fiber art emerges from an anti-colonial struggle against cultural and intellectual domination, serving as a strategy for "decolonizing the imagination"- to use Emma Perez's term- and for liberating spiritual energies, which the artist accesses by shifting the frame of reference or by creating new contexts through which to view the familiar." Clara Roman-Odio, "Flags, the Sacred, and a Different America," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022
Exhibitions
Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: One Nation Underground, Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX, 2022Literature
Laura E. Perez and Ann Marie Leimer, eds., Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2022, between pages 90-91 (illustrated)
