Jeanne Medina Le, Becoming: Prayers for Estela Crudo, a performance from the Interpretive Center for Embodied Textiles exhibition at The Alice in Seattle, WA. October 2018.
Click image to view video.
JEANNE MEDINA LE
Jeanne Medina Le is a Filipina-American Los Angeles-based artist currently head of the Fiber Program at CSU-Long Beach. Jeanne uses textiles to investigate the language, meaning, and knowledge embodied in the relationship textiles share with the body. She weaves large-scale works she calls “body objects” performed with and on the body. This weaving, Prayers for Estela Crudo, was created during the time when Jeanne’s grandmother was bedridden after a stroke, and Jeanne could not be with her. It is woven from thousands of rug knots made of Synthetic Rayon Raffia, whose physical presence evokes an emotional heaviness, laden withhours of prayers and the labor required to complete the work. When the work is not being interacted with in performance, it is displayed on a steel armature on the wall.
JEANNE MEDINA LE is an LA-based artist who uses textile, the body, and installation to perform artistic research. Medina considers her production a continuous process which attempts to learn and decolonize the fixed and fluid spaces of her filipina-american identity. She is interested in the language, meaning, and knowledge embodied in textiles that resonate in the broader ecology of human-ing. Jeanne is Assistant Professor in 3D Media at California State University and Fiber Program Area Head.
She received her BFA in Fiber and Material Studies (2001) and Post-Baccalaureate in Fashion, Body and Garment (2009) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and her MFA in Fiber (2013) from Cranbrook Academy of Art where she was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Award. The award enabled her to pursue research in Antwerp, Belgium at the ModeMuseum (MoMu), and to work with fashion designer, Christian Wijnants. In 2018 she was awarded the Fountainhead Fellowship in Craft & Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). There she worked with the Highland Support Project and fair-trade weaving organization, Pixan, in Xela, Guatemala to develop textile designs with indigenous Mayan weavers. Her collaborations include a 2019 Bessie Award winning project with choreographer, Ni’Ja Whitson. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Caldera, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and Pine Meadow Ranch. Jeanne served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Fibers at Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) in Portland, OR.
Her exhibitions include Interpretive Center for Embodied Textiles solo-exhibition at the Alice Gallery in Seattle; GARB at ArtCenter Pasadena; International Fiber Art Fair in Seoul, Korea; Ancestral Offerings solo-exhibition at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA; and Discursive at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene, OR. Her work is in the permanent collection at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Rachel “Bunny” Mellon Collection in Upperville, VA.
Go back to Connective Threads HERE
