Hava Liebowitz

I first made this performance piece when I was recovering from dermatillomania. At that time, I felt very painfully the gap how I looked naturally and how I felt I needed to look to be perceived as pretty, professional, and sane. I wanted to document the ritual of putting on makeup that I used to close this gap. I consider myself to be a queer feminist and I make a lot of art through that lens. I like making art about gender and about queer history. I think textile arts have a unique history among marginalized people as a way to document history, transmit and create culture, and communicate ideas of self. I enjoy creating art about historical or mythic figures, like Julie d’Aubigny or Lilith, who informed or expanded our understanding of ourselves today. I am interested in nature as a subject and the mystical side of nature. I think of weaving as a kind of magic, as a way of manifesting a future through symbolic image. In the future, I hope to continue creating illustrations, weavings, paintings and embroideries that can be both a mirror and a gateway, that speak to my experience and to more universal ideas about gender, myth, spirit, and diaspora. I also see the potential of art and performance as a community care practice and have had the wonderful opportunity to facilitate art in that context before. Most of all, I want to make art that invites and celebrates connection.

Hava Liebowitz was born in Washington state and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She studied Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and currently studies Studio Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Michigan. She is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer. Much of her art is made through a queer feminist lens. In her free time, she reads tarot and makes embroidery