Brit Micho, Curator of Exhibitions
This month’s now on view post is taking a detour from our typical content. As I was in the galleries looking at the wonderful works we have on display, I was most struck by the variety of texture throughout the spaces. Highlighting the different processes, this post will dissect the various textures that caught my eye.
In gallery 1, we have Weaving the Narrative: The works of Dinh Q. Lê which displays two different mediums: his photo-weavings and his hand-embroidered linen. Lê was a Vietnamese-American artist known for his large-scale photo-weavings that examine the conflicting international narratives of the Vietnam War (1955-1975) and the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979).
Differing from his typical photo-weaving are his hand-embroidered linen series titled the Texture of Memory. In short, Lê embroidered portraits of men, women, and children who were interrogated and murdered in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. In the aftermath of these atrocities, Cambodian refugees reported blindness as a neurological response to post-traumatic stress. Lê honored these refugees through the Texture of Memory series, intending these works to be touched in order to “see” the image, similar to reading braille.
This work of art not only interacts with viewers’ visual analysis, but it includes a physical analysis as well–actually being able to touch the texture, not often found in museums. If we look at the detailed image, we can see that there is white embroidery thread on white linen canvas. The monochromatic color scheme and overlapping outlines of the figures create a nearly indistinguishable abstract composition emboldened only by the shadows under the embroidery…