Sarah Zapata dresses entire rooms in dazzling, colorful, handwoven textiles.
Sarah Zapata’s handwoven textiles engulf furniture, ladders, blocks, and walls in color and texture. The Brooklyn-based, queer, Peruvian American artist draws upon her identity in her vibrant work. Incorporating Peruvian craft traditions, symbols of outcasts and outsiders, historically gendered labor, her strict evangelical Christian upbringing, and queer history, she immerses the viewer in a kaleidoscopic, tactile environment. “When I was a kid, I had so little control over things in my life, but making things was a means of expression and accessing just a little bit of agency,” she says. Zapata is currently in residence at CALA Alliance in Phoenix, where she is preparing for an upcoming exhibition at Arizona State University Art Museum in 2024. So the roots be known, which Jon Spayde wrote about in “Craft Happenings” in the Fall 2023 issue of American Craft, is on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, until July 28, 2024.
How do you describe your work or practice in 50 words or less?
I like to think about how textiles speak to tradition and power structures and colonialism. Through installation, cloth is used to adorn the space to direct the body through it, rather than adorning the body.
Installation view of So the roots be known at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, 2023.
