Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: One Nation Underground: San Antonio

"Jimenez Underwood's compelling visual narratives express the inter-connectedness of postmodern societies, insisting on beauty in the midst of struggle and celebrating the experience of being in nepantla, as this experience has enabled the artist to see and understand the world through a tricultural lens."

 

- Clara Roman, "Odio , Flags, the Sacred, and a Different America in Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Fiber Art," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022

"What if we had flowers instead of stars in our flag’s canton?  Would our ecological gaze be sharpened? Is it possible to stitch a flag that is imbued with the feminine gaze, from ground zero, the kitchen? I embroidered white silk inside the canton and defined four southern state border flowers: the Poppy, Saguaro, Yucca, and Bluebonnet. I over-dyed worn kitchen towels and Mexican Indigenous flower-embroidered tortilla cloths cut into strips, resewn into stripes and created a triangular flag. Symbolically, two American kitchens, unknown to each other, are united in their concern for the American flower eco-system."

- Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

"The dominant motifs of this series are the simple tortilla and the basket, both symbols of Indigenous peoples particularly renowned for their basket-weaving techniques and the long-standing eating habits they shared...Baskets are usually made out of natural materials such as wood, grass, or animal remains. But in Undocumented Tortilla Basket (2008), an empty basket made of barbed wire, aluminum, and steel wire evoked the unnatural experience of the US-Mexico borderland: a territory plunged in pain and disavowal."

-Clara Roman, "Odio, Flags, the Sacred, and a Different American in Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Fiber Art," Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022

"Redefining the practice of weaving, Jimenez Underwood works with repurposed barbed wire, yellow caution tape, safety pins, and plastic bags and crosses Indigenous, Chicana, European, and Euro-American art practices."

-Laura E. Pérez and Ann Marie Leimer, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood Art, Weaving, Vision, Duke University Press, 2022