Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s Fall 2024 Artpace exhibition, UNDOCUMENTED TALES OF THE FUTURE: NOW, explores humanity’s relentless pursuit of control and the cosmic reverberations of our actions. Through multi-media, Underwood engages with border politics and the divine balance of beauty birthed from destruction.
A large figure of earth, Divine Homecoming, lays on a platform in the center of the exhibition. The earth is torn apart and is composed of fabric, repurposed buttons, safety pins, and beads. Barbed wire, at its inception, is forged and shaped into a sharp, piercing object that does the bidding of its human makers through division and oppression. Consuelo approaches barbed wire with the sensibility of a weaver, uniting it with thread and other materials and reshaping its destiny.
Hiking Through the Galaxy is a painted mural with acrylic paint, barbed wire, fabric, aluminum wire, and nails. The imagery depicts an Aztec codex, telling the universal story of male and female balance. Elements such as painted color shifts and footprints guide viewers through a thematic exploration of contemporary perception and anthropomorphic reality. Underwood continues to weave a narrative that links ancient and modern human actions with cosmic phenomena.
Suited for the hands of a weaver, Planetary Expedition, Undocumented, hangs from the ceiling and combines linen, cotton, silk threads, copper, steel, and barbed wire. Underwood’s technique reminds viewers that wire is thread that holds memory. Here, copper, and silver wire are woven into the textile where Earth, Mars, and Venus are depicted. Underwood’s use of celestial imagery draws from childhood observations of these planets. Her memory of Mars and Venus strikes the pitch black of the shared night sky. The textile, woven with metallic threads, guides visitors like a match in the dark toward feeling and empathetic places.
A sensibility of texture and craft can be seen when observing the surface of Underwood’s work. Challenging traditional distinctions between art and craft, Underwood’s material choices denote intention, design, and beauty. UNDOCUMENTED TALES OF THE FUTURE: NOW embraces form and allows materials to transcend their origin. The artist suggests humans can choose how to see and handle what the earth provides. If we continue to approach life with malice and fear, the earth will shatter, and the thread of human experience will be cut short. At Artpace, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood explores human resilience and the cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth.
–Ada Smith Genitempo, Residencies and Exhibitions Manager
