The Armory Show: Claudia Alarcón & Silät | Anni Albers
Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to share a dual presentation by the textile collective Claudia Alarcón & Silät (founded 2023) and the Bauhaus weaver and printmaker Anni Albers (1899-1994) at the Armory Show, 2024. Claudia Alarcón and Silät are a collective of women weavers from the indigenous Wichí communities of Salta, northwest Argentina. Producing new work in response to Albers’ textiles and ‘Pictorial Weaving’ prints, Claudia Alarcón & Silät bring into view the continuing back-and-forth exchange between pre-Columbian and European traditions in abstraction and textile art.
Claudia Alarcón & Silät weave with hand-spun fibres from the local chaguar plant, a communal and female-led practice that has been central to Wichí culture for centuries. An inherited visual language of Wichí symbols provides a ground for their radical abstract works, which are celebrated this year in Adriano Pedrosa’s curation at the Venice Biennale.
These textiles mark an important contribution to the rich tradition of geometric abstraction in South America, and to the strand of art history that includes Anni and Josef Albers’ exploration of pre-Hispanic South American textiles. In fact, Anni Albers held chaguar textiles from Salta in her personal collection, from which she extracted geometric principles and weaving techniques as she developed her own practice.
The pairing of these artists and their distinct interpretations of South American practices invites critical thought on the directions of influence, and on the European fascination with indigenous visual cultures in twentieth century art. Meanwhile, we celebrate the habitual return to pre-Columbian geometries as fertile ground for experimentation, in resistance to viewing these as static traditions.
For a full list of available works, please email assistant@ceciliabrunsonprojects.com
