Solo show: Yohanna M. Roa

The exhibition Mujer textil by Yohanna M. Roa synthesizes and simultaneously expands the transdisciplinary artistic practice of this Colombian-North American creator, through an immersive installation that activates through performance, and incorporating individual works created at different times in her career.

Family Portraits III, 2021. Printed on pearlescent paper, enhanced with tulle, beads, and embroidery. Lace frame. 87 x 72 x 3 cm.

The exhibition has an autobiographical foundation, as the use of sewing, embroidery, and crochet in Roa's pieces harks back to her upbringing in a family where her great-grandfather was a tailor and her grandmother a seamstress and clothing designer. At the same time, Roa's work utilizes the intervention and transformation of canonical images from art history with textile media to critique the patriarchal and colonial structures that establish hierarchies of gaze and material culture, which are imposed on our bodies and our identities.

Family Portraits I, 2021. Art history book pages with embroidery and a crochet frame. 24 x 20.4 x 2.4 cm each.
In this way, she recovers and values ​​"the capacity of many women to cover and construct environments, and to transform public bodies from the private sphere," in works and actions that transgress the imaginary boundaries that our cultures and consciences establish between historical moments, geographical spaces, gender identities, and definitions of art, building an environment of freedom and discovery that is simultaneously a personal manifesto and a proposal for restructuring socially imposed power relations.

Mantel, 2020. An art history book page with embroidery and a crochet frame. 36 x 60 x 2.5 cm