Tanya Aguiñiga

The artist and activist brings together BIPOC-led organisations from across the city of LA into a radical communal space at Frieze Los Angeles 2022.

A highlight for Frieze Los Angeles 2022 is a collaboration with artist Tanya Aguiñiga, founder of Art Made Between Opposite Sides, to present BIPOC Exchange. This communal space, located within The Beverly Hilton Hotel, inside the Wilshire Garden, will present 10 Los Angeles-based, artist-led social impact projects. Taking place February 17–20 as part of the Frieze Projects program, BIPOC Exchange will look to create a space that honors each organization’s activities and efforts to make Los Angeles a more just community through a diverse range of disciplines, communities served, and range in project scale. Participating organizations include: People's Pottery Project, Tierra Del Sol, AMBOS, Las Fotos Project, Classroom of Compassion, Tequio Youth/MICOP, Contra Tiempo, GYOPO, Los Angeles Poverty Department, and Urban Voices Project.

Photo by Gina Clyne

Celebration Spectrum, 2021
Grand Park, Los Angeles, CA

Tanya Aguiñiga x dublab

Celebration Spectrum emphasizes art, music and cultural identity to raise mental health awareness as part of WE RISE’s Art Rise initiative.

Photography by Gina Clyne

Photos by Gina Clyne. Courtesy of the artist.

Following four years of active physical and emotional labor on the entire border, my body is now trying to figure out what to do with all I have experienced. I have started to distill the 2000-mile border through my body, trying to understand how I dealt and deal with the materiality of the border with my five senses, attempting to metabolize the physical as emotional. Through performative wearables made of blown glass embedded with border fence remnants, Metabolizing the Border explores how the body confronts fragments of the border fence through sight, sound, smell, taste, and tactility. The sandals are modeled after tire-soled huaraches that rural and Indigenous people wear in Mexico and Central America. They are sculpted in glass to represent the struggle migrants face when arriving in the U.S. of not being supported enough to succeed in society, and are designed to fail and to make more difficult a wearers’ journey. These glass prosthetics represent a radical shift in my work methodology and materials, bringing my 20-plus years of work on the border to an acute focus on the corporeal experience of borders. With this new series I aim to give a larger platform to the emotional and psychological effects that a border wall has on those living on the border.

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Después de cuatro años de trabajo físico y emocional activo en toda la frontera, mi cuerpo ahora está tratando de averiguar qué hacer con todo lo que he vivido. He comenzado a destilar las 2000 millas de frontera a través de mi cuerpo, tratando de entender cómo aguante y como aguanto con la materialidad de la frontera usando mis cinco sentidos, intentando metabolizar lo físico como emocional. A través de usables performativos hecho de vidrio soplado engastados con fragmentos de el muro fronterizo, Metabolizing the Border (Metabolizando la Frontera) explora cómo el cuerpo enfrenta fragmentos del muro fronterizo a través de la vista, el sonido, el olfato, el gusto y la tacto. Las sandalias están inspiradas por los huaraches con suela de llanta que usan los pueblos rurales e indígenas en México y América Central. Están esculpidos en vidrio para representar la lucha que enfrentan los migrantes cuando llegan a los Estados Unidos de no recibir el apoyo suficiente para tener éxito en la sociedad, y están diseñados para fracasar y dificultar el viaje de los usuarios. Estas prótesis de vidrio representan un cambio radical en la metodología y los materiales de mi trabajo, lo que hace que mis más de 20 años de trabajo en la frontera se centren en la experiencia corporal de las fronteras. Con esta nueva serie, mi objetivo es dar una plataforma más amplia a los efectos emocionales y psicológicos que un muro fronterizo tiene en quienes viven en la frontera.

Movement as Translation of Emotion, Material as Witness, 2019 gatherings of women, braided cotton cord, dye, watercolor paper, pins

There is a language each of our hands speak, a way of engaging -- thereby encoding the physical world. Tactile transmissions from our pasts, projected to a future. Remembering we were once connected to a woman, we again connect to other women, and look to our generative intuition as a guiding force for an action of solidarity, communication, healing and craft.

The work was created on site at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) during two gatherings for the exhibition Unraveling Collective Forms // Quema de Papalotes curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar. One, a private introspective event before the opening and a second public celebratory event to close. Playing off the notion of women’s work being subjugated to the realm of the soft in art, and exploring our relationship to the domestic/labor, women of diverse backgrounds will be invited to help create a collaborative fiber piece that acts as a barometer of our collective feminine consciousness through making meditative knots dipped into black dye which will be allowed to continuously drip onto a cascade of paper. Questioning the importance of the action, the form and mark-making.

The process of making this piece mirrors our studio structure. We will create a space in which nurtury and support is central to our actions through food, non-hierarchical modes of collaboration, and inclusive conversation. The studio cooked our favorite comfort foods to greet collaborators in the first hour of the night.

WeALL was a benefit presented by AMBOS Project and Dublab for the refugees on the US/Mexico border.

We all need rights.

We all need refuge.

We all need dignity.

We all need freedom of movement.

Live performances by Ceci Bastida, Dorian Wood, Gemma Castro

DJ sets Chico Sonido, Devendra Banhart, Hoseh, Melissa Dueñas, Xandão

Photos by Gina Clyne.

As part of her solo exhibition, Craft & Care, at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) Tanya was also their Artist-in-Residence in July 2018. Performance Crafting: Backstrap Weaving was a four day event transforming the museum’s lobby staircase into a backstrap loom. Performed by Tanya with Bianca Dominguez, Sonia Kim and Marcelle St. Bernard.

For the Hammer Museum’s 2017 Family Day: Art Beyond Borders participants were asked to contribute to a giant weaving that would later be installed at the U.S.-Mexico border.

For the New Children’s Museum’s 7th annual Mass Creativity Day Tanya created fun and engaging workshops, centered on the theme of “emotions,” where children and families explored their creativity and create imaginary creatures. The entire program came together on June 22, 2019 where the imaginary creatures from all the centers will come together.

Mass Creativity is an artist-led community outreach program that includes a series of seven workshops at various community centers throughout San Diego. The program culminated in an all-day outdoor celebration of art, creativity and community called Mass Creativity Day held at the park across from the Museum.

Border Quipu/Quipu Fronterizo (AMBOS Project), 2016-2018 Recycled dress and bathing suit straps Variable

Included in the permanent collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Quipu Fronterizo/Border Quipu is a community-based intervention that engages US/Mexico border commuters entering the US by giving two strands of thread and asking to anonymously tie them into a knot. Each knot was collected from commuters and tied to others creating a record of daily migrations. Each participant was asked their opinion about the border and their commute that launched more detailed conversations about the border and the project. The quipu created in San Ysidro in 2016 was installed on a billboard over the market in view of the cars waiting to cross the border. The traffic at the crossing creates a 4-6 hour wait on average for those crossing, and this display let the passing cars see the recorded migrations of previous days.

96 Deaths, 2017

Percussion: Tanya Aguiñiga, Glenn Weyant, Diana Ryoo, Natalie Godinez and Cecilia Brawley Reader: Jackie Amezquita

Images by Gina Clyne. Courtesy of AMBOS Project.

On September 1, 2017 the United States border wall in Sasabe, Arizona was struck ninety-six times while a name was read-- each time to honor the life of every man, woman and child who had died because of border militarization in Southern Arizona since the first of the year. This performance was an annual realization of the score Until There Are No More Deaths -- an original percussion piece written for border walls wherever they exist by Glenn Weyant. As of November 15, 2017 the number of immigrant deaths has risen to 117 according to the Humane Borders database.

View performance here.

Tensión (AMBOS Project), 2017

Performed by Tanya Aguiñiga and Jackie Amézquita.

Images by Gina Clyne. Courtesy of AMBOS Project.

Tanya Aguiñiga and Jackie Amézquita both learned to backstrap weave from Mayan women in Chiapas (Southern Mexico) and Guatemala respectively. For Aguiñiga backstrap weaving represents the resistance and resilience of pre-colonial culture and knowledge. It is a tool for creating fiber that records the bodily connection to labor. In this performance, Aguiñiga and Amézquita are tied together through the border fence, the former in Douglas, Arizona, US, and the latter in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico in constant view of the US Border Patrol. Their tension and support became crucial in one another’s weaving. This site is of particular significance because it is the town where Amézquita attempted to enter the US illegally as a teenager to reunite with her mother.

View performance here.

America’s Wall, 2018

Performed by Tanya Aguiñiga, Jackie Amézquita, Cecilia Brawley, Natalie Godinez, Izabella Sanchez and/y Shannen Wallace.

Images by Gina Clyne. Courtesy of AMBOS Project.

This performance was inspired by the persistent questioning I face regarding the existence of a “wall” in my travels across the U.S. and Mexico. It documents and extracts evidence of the wall’s existence—there are three consecutive walls in the part of Mexico that I grew up in—in front of Trump’s proposed wall prototypes. This section of border fence, at Shroud of Turin, is made up of corrugated jet landing mats that were recycled from the Gulf War/Desert Storm. It was erected during Operation Gatekeeper, a strategic reinforcement of the U.S./Mexico Border, which was responsible for more migrant deaths in its first year than in the entirety of the previous seventy five years of Border Patrol History. My team and I took rust impressions from these walls on cotton as evidence of their existence.

View performance here.

Grapple (AMBOS Project), 2018

Images by Gina Clyne. Courtesy of AMBOS Project.

In this performance, Aguiñiga uses a shirt to, as the title suggests, grapple the fence at Playas de Tijuana physically, but also to signify both sides of the border while unveiling what the two sides of her identity represent. Aguiñiga states, “My impotent and shaky grip attempt to reconcile the work we are doing with AMBOS and take ownership of this physical and emotional space. The border fence, especially this particular stretch of fence, has haunted my memories, as it was absent most of my childhood and left a marked scar on my small town of Playas de Tijuana when it was installed. The fence is a permanent reminder that we are not wanted, that we are less than, that we are what gets filtered out. It is a stigma we invisibly carry the rest of our lives, as we find our place in the world navigating the liminal.”

View performance here.

Every year the Hammer Museum welcomes hundreds of their youngest visitors to the museum for Family Day, a free festival-style extravaganza of art, music, improv, performances, and more. The 7th annual Family Day 2017 theme was Art for Good. Every day history is being made, and there is no better time than now to uplift and enable young people to impart good in the world through art and activism.

We welcomed the Hammer to our studio for an interview and demonstration of our Family Day project. For the workshop we invited families to make "manifesto tea towels," a dynamic blend of community empowerment and textile design. The tea towels become part of a collective artwork that was donated to the nonprofit organization Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA).

Read interview here.

Craft Emergency Relief Fund

Tanya has proudly served on the Board of CERF+ since 2017.

Hand in Hand uses the wet felting techniques that Tanya is best known for and applies it to bodies, not just as a way to experience the materiality of wool, but as a way to allow for a communal experience of making though care and nurtury. Each person felted the left arm of the person in front of them as their left arm is felted by the person behind them, creating a chain of perpetual care through craft.

Hand in Hand aims to connect community members, teach new skills, engage the public in the making of exhibited art, and satisfy our needs for human contact while exposing individuals to craft.

Close Encounters: Make and Take a Seat (2015) was inspired by the Hammer Museum’s Thomas Heatherwick exhibition, which included Heatherwick studio’s innovative chair designs.

For Close Encounters Tanya guided families in designing and making their very own seats.

For Performance Crafting: Community Felt-In we created a 48 foot long fiber sculpture to activate unused public land while bringing attention to the Los Angeles River and simultaneously sharing skills and building community. We collectively laid out the design and felted the fiber through dance, using LA River Water. All materials were donated and food and live music were provided for participants.  The pieces were created for the 2014 Loving After Lifetimes of All This traveling exhibition which considered the connections between craft, self-care, and survival, as well as how intergenerational apprenticeship functions within historically disadvantaged or underserved populations.

Photos by Jim Newberry

Maclovio Rojas is an autonomous land squat on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico run by women and made out of trash from the US. Tanya co-built and ran the community center for 6 years as part of The Border Art Workshop/Taler de Arte Fronterizo BAW/TAF. The community partnership brought attention to injustices the community faced through arts-only initiatives. At the community center Tanya taught art classes to children and adults, managed large-scale construction projects, was the liaison between BAW/TAF and the community as well as managed funds from multiple grants and secured donations to maintain the community center, build a sculpting school and a cemetery. This experience cemented her desire to use art as vehicle for community empowerment, to work collaboratively and to dedicate herself to arts education alongside her personal work, allowing for intersection when possible.