“Material Inheritances” at the Armory Show

What does it mean to decolonize an art fair? Candice Hopkins, who curated the Armory Show’s Focus section, tells the Art Newspaper’s Torey Akers that it’s “less about representing artists who I feel haven’t been represented on this kind of stage before, and it’s actually a deeper exploration into thinking about material inheritances. That can be practices and tools and techniques that are passed down over generations. That can be regional or place-based, because materials and their histories tell stories.”

She cites Eric-Paul Riege, the Diné textile artist whose works span sculptural installation and performance, as emblematic of her vision for the section:

“He works with many generations of weavers in his family, and he taught himself to weave based on a weaving that was made by his grandmother that’s now part of the regalia that he makes. He makes these giant, oversized soft sculptures, many of them modelled after what you would see today as contemporary Navajo jewellery. They’ve increasingly become animated, so they make sound and he performs in relation to them.”

Read “Indigenous artists in the spotlight at this year’s Armory Show.”