Ariadne's Thread

Image: Kira Dominguez Hultgren, The Eagle Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree, 2022, CA wool, grandma's silk, artist's hair, LA jute, PVC, wood, 96 x 105 x 36 inches (variable). Courtesy of the artist

April 14-May 27, 2023

Opening Reception: Friday, April 14

5-7:30pm, Art Alliance

The Philadelphia Art Alliance at University of the Arts is pleased to present Ariadne’s Thread, a group exhibition of four contemporary artists working in fiber: Caroline Achaintre, Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Sophie Stone and Margo Wolowiec. The exhibition’s title most obviously references the Cretan princess in Greek mythology, but the phrase is also significant in logic, referring to the process of methodically solving a problem through multiple means. As such, it reflects tracing the thread of an idea, back and forth, to its ultimate endpoint: the creation of radical artworks. Each of the artists in Ariadne’s Thread use fiber to signify the world in political and material ways.

Caroline Achaintre (b. 1969, Toulouse, FR) was raised in Fürth, Germany and, after training as a blacksmith, completed degrees at Chelsea College of Arts, London and Goldsmiths, University of London. Achaintre has worked in installation, drawing and ceramics but she is most known for her enormous, almost garishly expressionist hand-tufted works, which draw heavily on animism, expressionism, carnival traditions and tribal apparitional masks with the potential to both attract and repulse. Using a tufting gun spontaneously and intuitively to shoot strands of yarn through the back of tightly stretched canvases, she creates large-scale woolen sculptural tapestries whose irregular forms suggest fantastical trophies, alternately evoking silky hair, coarse fur and even runny, dripping paint. These theatrical images function both pictorially and concretely. Achaintre has exhibited internationally including at Lothar Fischer Museum, Neumarkt, Germany; Kusthause Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Germany; CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Fondazione Guiliani, Rome; MOCO, Montpellier, France; Belvedere Museum, Vienna; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Dormunder Kunstverein, Dortmund, Germany; Museo de Arte Precolombiano Casa del Alabado, Quito, Ecuador; BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom; Tate Britain, London; and Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy. Achaintre's work belongs to international collections that include the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Belvedere Museum, Vienna; TATE, United Kingdom; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and Arts Council Collection, United Kingdom. She is represented by This is Arcade, London and Art: Concept, Paris. Achaintre lives and works in London.

Kira Dominguez Hultgren (b. 1980, Oakland, CA) studied French postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University, and performance and fine arts in Río Negro, Argentina. With dual-degrees in fine arts and visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts, her works are informed by material and embodied rhetorics, re-storying material culture and weaving as a performative critique of the visual. Her weavings present multi-ethnic traditions (Chicanx, Punjabi, Hawaiian) and several modes of construction from open loom weavings to jacquard imagery, "constructed cultural affiliations sutured together." Dominguez Hultgren has exhibited her work at the de Young Museum, headlined UNTITLED, ART San Francisco, was featured in Architectural Digest, and reviewed in the New York Times. She has had three solo shows with Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco; a solo show at Heroes Gallery, New York; and her first solo museum show at the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Group exhibitions include Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York; the Roswell Museum; and Kent State University. Her fellowships and residencies include the Headlands Center for the Arts, CA; Facebook, CA; and Gensler Architecture; San Francisco. Dominguez Hultgren is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is represented by Eleanor Harwood Gallery

Sophie Stone (b. 1987, Massachusetts) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009. Stone's works are a mixture of Arte Povera and fiberwork, suturing new and used materials like cotton or acrylic rugs, sisal fans, plastic beads and painted cardboard together into accretions positioned between true functionality and installation. The reversible works can be installed on the wall or floor, playing with dualities of "painting," "rug" or "wall decoration" tropes. By repurposing the old and the odd, these works gain domestic histories. Stone has been featured in exhibitions at White Columns, New York; Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY; Safe Gallery, New York; Company Gallery, New York; The Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Nina Johnson, Miami; M+B, Los Angeles; Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles; Romeo, New York; Shoot the Lobster, New York; Eli Ping, New York; and Nicole Klagsbrun, New York. Stone has been written about in Art News, Artforum, Artsy, Frieze Magazine and Hyperallergic. She lives and works in New York.

Margo Wolowiec (b. 1985, Detroit, MI) received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2013. Wolowiec's jacquard works have topical references embedded within, creating an atmospheric digital metaverse in which news headlines clash with virtual reality. Wolowiec has had solo exhibitions at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; California College of Arts, San Francisco; McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; Marlborough Contemporary, New York;  Library Street Collective, Detroit; Harpers, New York and East Hampton; Lisa Cooley, New York; Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia; and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London. Internationally Wolowiec's work has been exhibited at Galeria Casas Riegner, Bogatá; Eduardo Secci Gallery, Florence; Brand New Gallery, Milan; LUCE Gallery, Torino, Italy; Granpalazzo Palazzo Rospigliosi, Zagarolo, Italy; National Gallery of Kosovo; and DukSung Women's University, Seoul. Her works are in the public collections of the Detroit Center for Photography, MI; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San José Museum of Art; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; MacLean Collection, Libertyville, IL; and the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, San Francisco. Wolowiec currently lives and works outside of Detroit. She is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.