MARGARITA JANE ARGUEDAS

Arguedas’ practice involves hand-deconstructing knit fabric until it arrives at its most basic form, a process similar to a run in a pair of stockings, only intentionally and on a much larger scale. The hand-deconstructed fabric serves as a meta-reflection on the complexities of ecology’s evolution and our human condition, representing the deconstruction of systems in and of themselves—such as the fabric of society.

 

Arguedas adopted this practice nearly a decade ago while attending California College of Art and participating in renowned Visiting Artist Chiharu Shiota’s semester course. Shiota described clothing as our ‘second skin’, performing our identities through what we wear and our relationships with it. Soon after, Arguedas applied this concept to her sculpture studies, initially exploring how we cast ourselves in clothing every day, deconstructing the physical and conceptual relationship between materiality and identity.

 

Arguedas’s work includes installations, paintings, sculptures, and abstracted digital patterns/animations.