Familien Iglesias “LOOPS AT A SPOOL”

Ortega y Gasset Projects @ The Old American Can Factory

[Image: Familien Iglesias "Fun Without Skis or Dancing" (2017) Cotton and Wool, stretcher bars, tacks, hinge, handle, modeling clay 30 x 25 in.]

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Born and raised in Queens, NY to Norwegian/Dominican parents, the collaborative team of artists and sisters Lisa and Janelle Iglesias work together as Las Hermanas Iglesias, a moniker that locates their identity within the historical and philosophical contexts of feminism, teamwork, and multiplicity. Over the past ten years of the artists’ collective art practice, Las Hermanas, have worked formally and informally with their mother Bodhild as well. For their latest project at Ortega y Gasset, Las Hermanas Iglesias have further expanded this familial cooperation, actively including Lisa’s son, Bowie, in the development and creation of LOOPS AT A SPOOL. The exhibition features a dialogic call and response between the four family members, across 3 generations and multiple mediums.

LOOPS AT A SPOOL features works on paper, created by Las Hermanas Iglesias, alongside textile counterparts that function as visual translations, knit by Bodhild. As the matriarch of the Norwegian-Dominican family, Bodhild has long played the role as translator, the only member who speaks Norwegian, Spanish and English fluently. Growing up in rural Norway, Bodhild cultivated a deep intimacy with knitting and other textile traditions such as weaving and embroidery, techniques she now instrumentalizes as translational processes.

Her youngest grandchild and namesake, Bowie, is six years old. Understanding his role as co-conspirator and interpreter, Bowie’s contributions are mischievously placed throughout the gallery, serving as echoes and responses to the specific forms and stories he discovers in his collaborator’s work. This exhibition marks the first time that Lisa, Janelle, Bodhild and Bowie are exhibiting work created in concert with each other as Familien Iglesias.

While childhood has been imagined as the most fearlessly creative time in one’s life, children are often regarded as a major distraction to a professional, critical practice. Eschewing this notion as well as the tradition of the solitary (and usually male) cultural producer, Familien Iglesias is interested in exploring and celebrating the ways in which the multiple members influence, distract, reshape and finish each other’s aesthetic sentences. Like the palindromic title suggests, the works in LOOPS AT A SPOOL are motivated by a rhythmic back and forth dialogue, a sense of play and an exploration of how ideas translate between different materials, laying bare the commonalities and glitches between objects and phenomena.

Las Hermanas Iglesias is the project-based collaboration of Lisa and Janelle Iglesias. For their project at Ortega y Gasset Projects, the artists have extended their collaboration to include their mother, Bodhild, and Lisa’s son, Bowie, under the collective name Familien Iglesias.

Bodhild Brendryen Iglesias was born in Folldal, Norway, and moved to NYC when she was 20. Shortly thereafter, she fell in love Bienvenido, a political scientist from the Dominican Republic, whom she married and raised 4 daughters in Queens, NYC with. Bo worked as a NYC Public School teacher for 12 years, has been skiing since she was 2, knitting since she was 9, and has collaborated with her youngest daughters off and on for the past 10 years. She is the only Iglesias family member who speaks English, Norwegian and Spanish fluently (in addition to some German and French).

Lisa received her MFA from the University of Florida where she is now an Assistant Professor of Drawing & Painting and mother to Bowery Katskill Gerlitz Iglesias. Janelle earned her degree in Sculpture from VCU and and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Carnegie Mellon University. Lisa and Janelle’s individual & collaborative work have been exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum, Sculpture Center, Abrons Art Center and other spaces. As a team they’ve been artists in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts through LMCC’s Paris residency program, Fanoon: Center for Print Research at VCU Qatar and Stoneleaf Retreat in New York. Their individual and collaborative work has been supported by the Queens Council for the Arts, NYFA, NALAC, The Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Las Hermanas maintain an ad hoc studio in Queens while working on projects in lots of places.