Video: weaver girl limns two rainbows | An Artist Talk by iris yirei hu | In conversation with Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith | Sovereign Intimacies

We were pleased to invite you to tune in on Monday, November 16 at 7 pm CT for weaver girl limns two rainbows, an artist talk by iris yirei hu in conversation with curators Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith. Through iris’ work, they talked about the ways in which collaborations and fostering space for transformative encounters within interpersonal, cross-cultural relationships manifest in the exhibition, and how we can look to the genuine and nurturing relationships in our daily lives for guidance in changing the way museums and art spaces operate. weaver girl limns two rainbows was presented in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre as part of Sovereign Intimacies.

iris yirei hu (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist who works in painting, fibers, writing, and assemblage. In her work, one may encounter materials, stories, living organisms, and ecologies from Taiwan, California, Southern China, Mexico, and the American Southwest. She is interested in how people, places, and things are interconnected and networked, and how collaboration in the form of learning from, working with, and being in relation to, can enable transformative futures and friendships. Her work has led her to form connections with historians, artists, scientists, keepers of traditions, and community organizers and stakeholders, and she centers learning and collaboration as methods of engagement. Her work is both research based and dependent on lived experience. hu has shown her work at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), OxyArts at Occidental College, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Women’s Center for Creative Work, Human Resources, Lenfest Center for the Arts (New York, NY), and Visitor Welcome Center. Public art commissions include mural wraps at California State University Dominguez Hills (2020) and bus and rail posters for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (2016). She has held residencies at the Women’s Center for Creative Work (2018), Carrizozo AIR (2020), and is currently in residence at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), where she will develop creative projects to reorient ourselves in the immediacy of the changing environment. Her work has been reviewed and featured in the LA Times, Artforum, Carla, CNN, Sinovision, KCET, X-TRA Online, and Artillery. She is working on her first book and is currently teaching Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design. She earned her BA from UCLA and MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York.

Sovereign Intimacies was a group exhibition co-curated by Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith, in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre. The exhibition took place at Plug In ICA from September 26 – December 20, 2020, with extensive programming that consists of online talks, workshops, screenings, and poetry readings. Sovereign Intimacies explored themes of cultural and community exchange between Indigenous artists and artists from the diaspora, more specifically artists who are First Nations, Inuit and Métis collaborating with artists living in what is currently called Canada who came to this land and are not part of the settler/colonial history of the country. The group show consisted of pairings of artists, as well as individuals, whose work is based on process and relationship building, and for those whose work is invested in active conceptualization around topics of friendship and intimacy, who are working to build collective vision of a sovereign future.