Weaving Mexico

October 5th, 2010 in Archive by The Kitchen Sisters0 Comments

Red, 2009, palm leaves and horse hair 39 x 55 inches

By Tess Kenner

Danish-born artist, Trine Ellitsgaard, hand-looms textiles. Her work is on exhibition with Latin American Masters at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California, October 9 through December 4. Her weaving is greatly influenced by Mexico, where she lived for over twenty years.

Latin American Masters writes that Mexico is reflected in the combination of materials she chooses to incorporate into her work: horse-hair, gold thread, plastic, paper, silk, sisal and seeds, the organic mixed with the inorganic, the luxurious with the pedestrian. Sometimes she appropriates forms seen in indigenous fabrics, a woolen skirt worn by the Chomula Indians of Chiapas, or an element suggested by ritual, such as the dried flowers set upon graves during the Day of the Dead….. Her weavings combine ordered geometric design, muted color, and a soothing balance of form and texture…. In a remarkable collaborative piece from the current exhibition, Ellitsgaard has taken a long palm braid, made by Mixtec weavers from Oaxaca, and woven an open, net-like structure, joined together with strands of red horse hair. The overall effect is of a contemporary work of art rooted in ancestral culture.

Trine Ellitsgaard has had solo exhibitions in the United states, Europe, and Mexico, including: the Danish Museum of Decorative Arts, Copenhagen (1977, 1982, 1983 and 2004), Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca (2000), and The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas (2003). This is her first exhibition with Latin American Masters.