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MIA WEINER

LA-based artist Mia Weiner has been recognised for her distinctive amalgamation of photography and textile art. Starting with a digital photograph, Weiner alters her images to create illustrations that appear to reference and challenge classical art. Whether it’s a modern tattoo on an otherwise statuesque body or a power socket in the background of a mythical nymph, Weiner uses humour and composition to propose a new narrative on the themes of identity, gender and power. From these images, she produces hand-woven tapestries that defy the notions of photography and what it means to make the digital physical again.

Immortal Waters, which you recently displayed at Unseen, is your largest work to date. Can you share the process of making this piece and the impact that scale has on the work and on the overall narrative?

I was so excited about making this piece. With all of my work, I start by taking photographs that are then digitally altered to create my desired composition. I use this reference to map out the different woven structures that will dictate the various tones in the cloth once I’m ready to hand-weave the piece on the loom.

In general, I think a lot about scale, both in the size of the work and the scale of the body within the work. I find it interesting to explore what happens to a body when it becomes miniature versus monumental or when the work feels like a window to a scene where a cropped image only shows a foot – but the size of the foot is still life-size. For Immortal Waters, I took inspiration from sirens, mermaids and nymphs. I wanted the piece to be towering because it highlights how their mythologies have dictated how we think about many feminine constructs.

A lot of your imagery is inspired by ancient mythology. Why do you think its important to reference art history when creating work that challenges the current narrative on gender and power?

I think we learn so much from the images we look at – at least, I have over time. As a woman and as a queer person, creating these images, especially of my own body and of my peers who haven’t always necessarily had the agency to exhibit in a gallery or museum – is liberating. By shifting the perspective, I can play with moments in art history, some that I love and some that I want to subvert. I hope that even if I fail to change the viewer’s mind about the depiction of the body, they might start to question the images they are accustomed to. As a child, I adored Gauguin paintings. I loved the colours in them, but as I got older, I realised he often depicted female figures as objects. That’s a problematic narrative to see repeatedly. In my work, I try to think about the gaze and the agency that bodies can have and what it means in the present day to make something simultaneously soft and powerful.

You often use yourself and people close to you in your initial photographs. Is this a deliberate decision, and what do you think it reveals about intimacy and identity?

I use my own body because of the history of portraiture and self-portraiture. If you look closely at the weavings, sometimes you can see the hint of a remote control or other little secret ways to figure out who is in the work. Many of the figures in the weavings are people I’m close with, partially because they’re available. Every new piece is a reflection of who is in my life. But also, my work is so much about intimacy. There’s a unique quality to the vulnerability I pull out of the image when it features someone I’m already close to. Funnily, the Sirens series consists only of women I met at a residency in Maine, so it’s people I knew just for a couple of weeks. I was lucky that they were willing to be part of work.

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You were recently awarded the V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography – which, congratulations, by the way. Your process of hand weaving tapestries based off of your own staged photographs has generated a really interesting dialogue around the boundless possibilities for photography. What initially drew you to hand weaving your photographs on a loom?

Thank you! I’m so passionate about the translation of the photographic image into cloth. There is such a proliferation of digital artwork, so I wanted to explore what happens when labour and care make an object physical again. Before weaving, I worked a lot with drawing, but it was all embroidery, so I pierced the fabric to create the final image. With weaving, the picture and the object are the same. It’s the structure of the textile that’s creating what we’re seeing. That ultimately shifted the way I think about composition.

You use a wide range of colour across your work. What role does colour have in your process, and is this something that you intentionally plan, or do you take a more meditative approach?

I love experimenting with colour. The decision of which colour I use entirely changes the weaving, not just because of the overall tone it creates, but also how much we physically see. Darker tones, for example, make the work feel more photographic, whereas lighter yarns create more abstraction due to the reduced contrast. I love these pieces because they require more effort to interpret the image. While I do plan out what colour I’m going to use, as I prepare the images to be woven, I often change my decision right before I start to weave. I even surprise myself with which colour I end up working with. However, the stripes or shifts in colour are not planned at all. That process happens intuitively. I consider the stripe an interruption, a glitch, a disruption of the image. Whilst it’s a new access point to enter the work, it also relates to the digital screen and moves the work back into the digital space.

I also started adding different materials to my weavings, including crystals, because I believe everything we create has energy. When making the weavings, I’m conscious of what energy goes into the cloth. That’s also partially how I choose my materials; I always like to use silk for a particular reason. When it comes to the crystals, I add whichever one asks to be part of the weaving. I listen to the crystal more than myself when making the work.
In August, you completed a residency at Yaddo where you wanted to explore some non-loom-based experimental drawings and sculptures. How was this experience for you and in what ways do you think it will influence your practice in the future?

I love residencies. I find it so fruitful to be removed from daily routines and forced to sit with my work in a different space. Particularly for me, it allows me to step back from weaving. At Yaddo, I was working on creating photographs that I edited while I was there and also drawings and paintings – not to show as drawings and paintings, but to translate back through the loom as experiments that I’ve been wanting to try but haven’t given myself the time and space for. I always think residencies are a gift. I might be gone for a month and worry that I haven’t produced anything, because I don’t have a loom there, but when I come home, I discover that time and space is so generative. I’m always amazed by how many years’ worth of work have come out of a few weeks at a new place.