Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is explicitly feminist and political. It reckons with the body and identity, with power and vulnerability, with structures that seek to define or confine. Molded silk portrays contradictions — fragility made weighty, translucence made visible, softness made resistant. Through form, material, and context I reflect not only my personal history, but broader social narratives. The ethereal delicacy and translucency of silk becomes a metaphor for identity: fluid, shifting, and multifaceted. Juxtaposed with industrial hardware, light fleeting material carries a presence and a voice.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Deborah Hirshfield is a Chicago based artist working in textiles, primarily silk, since the 1970s. She has taught extensively in both the private and public sector, in the U.S. and Mexico. Her interests in fiber were sparked in adolescence, as adornment in relation to the female body. She painted on silk with wax and dyes, focusing on inclusivity in nature; Media Parker Johnston, an early mentor and the author of Design on Fabric used her work in her lectures. After a twenty year career teaching art and music in Chicago public schools, and subsequently at the University level, teaching future educators in arts integration, Hirshfield transitioned to a three dimensional approach, dyeing and molding and embellishing silk as an exploration into the politics and social responses of feminism, gender, and democracy.
© Deborah Hirshfield