History: 胡意蕊 Iris Yirei Hu

Source of version: 4 (current)

自我介紹/ 經驗 Self-Introduction/ Past experiences : My paintings, weavings, and writings often become colorful and haptic room-sized assemblages, which are a culmination of networks that reverberate through time and space in both tangible and cosmic ways. In a single assemblage, one may encounter materials, stories, living organisms, and ecologies from Taiwan, California, Southern China, Mexico, and the American Southwest. I am interested in how disparate geographies, bodies, and temporalities are interconnected through a material or entity, such as a plant or textile, through which legacies of trade, colonialism, and disenfranchisement are revealed. I work collaboratively in the form of learning from and holding space for loss in an effort to give form to transformative futures and friendships. My work is heavily dependent on other people, their stories, and the landscapes from which they come. I am interested in the stories that enable my story to be told, and I approach my life and art making by rendering our relations to one another. As such, my work allows me to form connections and collaborate with artists, scientists, historians, keepers of traditions, and community stakeholders and organizers. For instance, I am an apprentice under fourth-generation Navajo weaver Melissa Cody, and have learned the basics of Atayal foot loom weaving from Ms. Sayun Zhou in Taiwan's Wulai Mountains. In collaboration, I center learning, and I use art as a vehicle to give form to stories, subjects, and movements that exist in the entanglement of colonization and dispossession of land and peoples. As an artist, I live with the daily question of how to create a more equitable and sustainable life and future for those especially affected by legacies of inequality. The central tenets of my practice rest on the following questions: ● If care for and asking permission from the historically disenfranchised and disempowered were centered as social priorities, how might your world and our world be different? ● Who are the elders or guides in your life that remind you that you’re connected to a set of lineages and relations? ● What moves you and what brings you joy? ● Who or what is beside you animating and enabling what you do? ● What possibilities can art offer in your immediate world, and in building multiracial coalitions and solidarities, in political activism, and in kinships and friendships? ● How can being intentional with your materials, who you’re in conversation with, and how you live with others be a life practice? ● What could happen if we centered care in our daily lives, in our environment, and in our society? ● How can we move towards a regenerative practice, in addition to a sustainable one? ● What is collaborative optimism? ● How do we make sense of our entangled world and work towards healing ​through​, with,​ ​in,​ o​ut​, ​between​, and ​beyond​ the world we’ve inherited? Website/ Portfolio 網站/ 作品集: www.irisyireihu.com 想分享的技術或技藝或概念 Technique/Concept that I want to share : 可以是一個技術、工藝知識、DIY技術、甚至是一種觀念 It could be a skills, tool, knowledge, craft technique, DIY technology or even just a concept. ***Working out what I'd like to share. I do organic indigo fermentation and dyeing using a relatively easy fructose method, but I'd love to learn more about traditional ways of indigo fermentation and dyeing. I weave in the Navajo way and on the Atayal foot loom, both of which I am not entitled to share, but am very interested in connecting with participants about various weaving practices. I can talk about the histories of the two weaving traditions I practice. Much of my work is about limning the intersections of indigeneity and immigration, and can offer ways to think about the fluidity of those identities with carefulness and care-full-ness. !!! Zoom in presentation {youtube movie="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuXjgegfZwk&feature=youtu.be" width="560" height="315" quality="high" allowFullScreen="y" desc="Tutorial: How to make 2D pattern from a 3D object"}