Kira Dominguez Hultgren’s weavings are a source code of information, memory, and access to knowledge. She uses a unique set of individual structured lines and paths that cross each other, intersecting, knotting, and loosening at varying points that, when tightened and pulled together, reveal either an abstracted set of patterns and shapes or legible text for the viewer to read. Many of her works record a story told through her fingers and body, relaying specific research points or narratives from her background and artistic lineage, including where she learned to weave certain styles, such as from Mary Coronado, a Mapuche-Argentine weaver, or where the artist first encountered weaving and was introduced to the backstrap loom in zocalos in Mexico.
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
A perpetual and continuous splitting, 2022
Handspun brown: skins, fleeces, straps, fabrics, yarns, silks, loom bars, zip ties, sticks, and other hardwares
162 x 126 x 26 inches (dimensions variable)
411.5 x 320 x 66 cm
Photo by Daniel Kukla
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
A perpetual and continuous splitting, 2022
Handspun brown: skins, fleeces, straps, fabrics, yarns, silks, loom bars, zip ties, sticks, and other hardwares
162 x 126 x 26 inches (dimensions variable)
411.5 x 320 x 66 cm
Photo by Daniel Kukla
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
A perpetual and continuous splitting, 2022 (detail)
Handspun brown: skins, fleeces, straps, fabrics, yarns, silks, loom bars, zip ties, sticks, and other hardwares
162 x 126 x 26 inches (dimensions variable)
411.5 x 320 x 66 cm
Photo by Daniel Kukla
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
A perpetual and continuous splitting, 2022 (detail)
Handspun brown: skins, fleeces, straps, fabrics, yarns, silks, loom bars, zip ties, sticks, and other hardwares
162 x 126 x 26 inches (dimensions variable)
411.5 x 320 x 66 cm
Photo by Daniel Kukla
Dominguez Hultgren’s works disrupt, collide, and blend numerous cultures and histories to reveal the complicated reality of existing and living. She views her work as a “scaffolding for stories,” a container for the memories and experiences that she notes “previous generation[s] had to forget, and another generation had to remember; both generations weaving into one another.” Her works are a vessel for cultural memory where she stores and retells the stories of various people, locations, and histories that she engages with or researches. Thinking of her work as a system of data and codes, she manually inserts handspun wool into her matrix to vocalize stories and highlight disruption points regarding topics such as colonialism, race, and ethnic identity. Through the beats of her fingers and hands moving in a rhythmic tempo, she makes distinct choices to disrupt the loom and move counter to fixed singular traditions and definitions of identity or material as an aggressive gesture against the colonial perceptions and structures that attempt to restrict individuals.
Artist texts by Marissa Del Toro
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
Arose, 2019
Virgin and less pure wool in homespun marigold and primitive rust; mixed yarn blends from the U.S., U.K., and Canada; Indian cotton; Chinese silk; climbing gym rope from Berkeley Ironworks; found wooden frame bars and stakes; cam straps and d-rings.
132 x 132 x 26 inches
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
At Least Both Your Parents are Brown, 2020
Brown yarn, brown silk, brown leather, brown fleece, brown felt, brown belts, brown fabric, brown wood
84 x 68 x 6 inches
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
Colita de Rana or Zip Ties, 2022
Handwoven and scrap fabrics, PVC splints, wood loom bars, zip ties, nursery rhymes
100 x 96 x 29 inches (dimensions variable)
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
Cosmic Fluff, 2020
Raw sheep’s wool and other fluff; loom bars.
144 x 300 x 15 inches
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
Crossed in Parts, 2018
Warp-faced weaving with supplemental warp floats. Handspun acid-dyed wool, acrylic and industrial wool, indigo-dyed ramie, wool mill ends, novelty yarn, metallic thread, leather, sari silk ribbon, nylon and polyester climbing rope from Berkeley Ironworks Climbing Gym
92 x 60 x 12 inches
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
No Dogs Allowed, 2021
Loomed fabric in double-cloth, overshot, and warp-faced plain weave. Nonmetallic conduit and other plastics; wool, silk, cotton, linen, and other yarns; oak trim; leashes.
95 x 127 x 20 inches
KIRA DOMINGUEZ HULTGREN
In the Silence Between Mother Tongues, 2022
Silk from a salwar and chunni that my grandmother wore; two nalas; rope from my favorite Utah climbing gym; paracord; found wood, plastic, and metal loom bars, heddle rods, and shed rods; eye bolts; handspun wool; skin dyed and acid dyed wool; digital-hand woven fabric in mostly cotton, mohair, and metallics; various other yarns and cut up fabrics in cotton, wool, acrylic, linen, and mohair.
92 x 55 x 12 inches
Eyes of the Skin
Installation view, New York
Photo by Daniel Kukla
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kira Dominguez Hultgren (b. 1980) is a U.S.-based artist and educator. She studied French postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University, and performance and fine arts in Río Negro, Argentina. With a dual-degree MFA/MA in Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts, her research interests include material and embodied rhetorics, re-storying material culture, and weaving as a performative critique of the visual. 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 two solo shows with Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, where she is represented, a solo show at Heroes Gallery in NYC, and her first solo museum show at the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textile. Her fellowships and residencies include the Headlands Center for the Arts, Facebook, and Gensler Architecture. Dominguez Hultgren is part-time faculty at SAIC in Fiber and Material Studies.
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