The Queue: Tali Weinberg

How do you describe your work or practice in 50 words or less?

I use textile processes like weaving and coiling to transform data, plant fibers and dyes, and plastics into abstract landscapes that explore relationships to place in the context of climate crisis. My current focus is the interdependence of ecological and human health, particularly the parallel harms fossil fuel extraction inflicts on the earth and our bodies.

How did you come to use data in your work?

My use of data grew from my interest in textiles as language and embodied knowledge. In my earlier work, I materialized text in series addressing labor and gender violence, and my first materializations of numerical data were in response to the housing crisis. I used the data similarly to how I used text: as a scaffold or entry point in the work. Data is valuable in condensing vast amounts of labor, time, and knowledge into a quickly digestible form, but it isn’t as objective as we’re taught, and it has as much potential to conceal as to reveal. I turned to the materiality and metaphors embodied in textiles as a counterweight to data’s limitations, to add the deeply personal and sociopolitical dimensions of the housing crisis—and, later, the climate crisis—back into the story the data tells.

If you could have work from any contemporary textile artist for your home or studio, whose would it be and why?

The most meaningful artworks in my home are from friends and mentors, like a paper weaving by Nathalie Miebach that she made from weather data for a specific place and grief-filled time I had told her about.

Which climate-related craft artists, exhibitions, or projects do you think the world should know about, and why?

I’m drawn to projects that point to intersections between ecological crises and other forms of injustice, that use material to help us see possibility and agency amidst the horrors of the climate crisis, and that open space for conversation with those who hold diverse perspectives. Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s Borderlines series connecting how immigration policy harms people and the more-than-human world, Jean Shin’s Freshwater, and Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Mirror Shield Project with water protectors are a few that come to mind. Plus, Kirsty Robertson’s essay on textiles and oil and excerpts of Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble on the Crochet Coral Reef project and Navajo weaving.

Shivaun Watchorn is associate editor of American Craft.