Los Angeles-based artist Mia Weiner creates hand woven tapestries of intimate scenes on themes of identity, gender and the psychology of human relationships. Responding to mythology and traditions in portraiture, Weiner’s photography based compositions put the body center stage exploring how figurative representation can hold power and agency. Weiner was awarded the V&A Parasol Prize by the Victoria & Albert Museum and Parasol Foundation last May ‘24.

Mia Weiner’s research focuses on the way the human figure has been represented and in particular how female subjects have often been depicted as objects. How do we shift that gaze, that power dynamic, that narrative?

“I engage in histories of portraiture, using my own body in each weaving along with the models that I choreograph. The photographs are then digitally manipulated before being handwoven – body parts are removed, coded objects added, color and contrast shifted. Visibility, time and place are complicated and confused. As the photograph is transformed into cloth, each pixel becomes a crossing of tensioned threads, and the relationship between object and image begins to equalize as the digital becomes haptic. Mostly monochromatic, the works sometimes shift in color unexpectedly or include the visual markers of production or glitch. These glitches and breaks in image become moments for queerness to seep into the cloth and a new point of access and intimacy. My work is about connection, both between bodies and cloth as a shared experience.” 

Mia received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020) and her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. Her work has been exhibited internationally including in New York, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Rome and Amsterdam.