Siempre Más / Always More, an exhibit of textile works by Minga Opazo, will be on view 1-4 p.m. Saturdays, July 25 through Sept. 18, at Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery, 229 E. Victoria St., the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara (AFSB) has announced.
The artist will be present on July 25 and Aug. 22. (Self-screening, masks, and social distancing are required.) A live, online Conversation with Opazo and Yessica Torres of Dab Art Gallery in Los Angeles will take place oat 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9.
In Siempre Más / Always More, Opazo explores the relationship of textiles to climate change, contemporary industrial textile production, and Chilean textile history. A fourth-generation craftsperson from Chile, Opazo exposes the unsustainable and dehumanizing practices of international textile production through large-scale weavings and installations made of found and recycled textiles.
For centuries, textiles for clothing in Chile were created by human hands using natural materials. These craft traditions shaped Chilean culture, providing communities with work, artistic expression, and a sense of identity.
With the invention of polyester, Lycra and nylon, and the dictatorial regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-90), Chile’s doors opened to the free market and mass-produced garments flooded in. Natural dyes and hand looms were replaced by artificial dyes, machines, and dehumanizing assembly lines.
Opazo’s series, Mejor Que Sobre Que Falte (Better Too Much Than Too Little), refers to the glut of discarded, chemically infused garments, which cannot be absorbed back into the natural world and are now being buried under Chilean soil.
Siempre Más / Always More includes wall sculptures, installations, and a new, site-specific weaving outdoors on the second-story porch railing of the Architectural Foundation, facing Victoria Street. This temporary installation highlights the fact that while the colors of used clothing will fade, the clothing will never completely disintegrate.
“We live in an era of excess, we consume and throw away,” Opazo said. “We don’t see the massive amount of overproduction in our everyday life, it’s invisible to us, tucked away.”
Opazo received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2020) and her BA from University of California Berkeley (2015). She maintains a weaving studio in Ventura and another in Joshua Tree for large-scale installations.
She was artist-in-residence at the Banff Art Center (Canada), the Acre Residency (Wisconsin) and the Haystack Mountain School (Maine), had solo shows at Dab Art Gallery in LA, the CAM Studio Gallery in Oxnard, and public installations at the HUD Gallery and the Museum of Ventura County.
The AFSB Gallery’s regular hours are 1-4 p.m. Saturdays and weekdays by appointment.