Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang
Kueens, 2009.
About:
Kueens, 2009.
It’s a cliché to say that art has the power to transform, but I’m still amazed at how Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang has transformed a Ku Klux Klan robe, ordered from a white-suprematist seamstress, into a charming non-white, non-suprematist fantasy. For his piece called Kueens, now in the “Greater New York” show at MoMA PS1 – the subject of this whole week of Daily Pics – Gonzalez-Lang handed over the robe to an undocumented Latina in Queens, who then embroidered it with patterns derived from various Amerindian cultures. Faced with a noxious tradition that believes in ethnic purity, Gonzalez-Lang and his embroiderer produce something that’s thoroughly, gloriously miscegenated. (Image courtesy the artist; photo by Pablo Enriquez)(text ArtNews)
Khinatown, 2013.
Ignacio González-Lang’s “Khinatown,” a black fabric sculpture in the form of a Ku Klux Klansman, is shot through with histories of racial violence; knitted sculptures of human anatomical parts by Kathleen Granados also refer to histories, but different ones, including the history of feminism.(text Holland Cotter NYT, June 2013)
Guess Who, 2013.
A few of the pieces have some political connotation. Ignacio Lang, who is from Puerto Rico and lives in the East Village, is presenting a black Ku Klux Klan robe that he asked immigrants who live in a Chinatown hotel to embroider with a design he created. Lang explained that the piece is a commentary on what it means to be a native of a place.
Lang said the robe went through many hands through a year, and almost didn’t get done because at one point of the process the robe disappeared for two months. “I was like, freaking out, I was very worried about it though, but then, you know, it appeared,” he said.(text wNYC website)
Sweeter than salt, 2013.
The Puerto Rican artist’s piece “Sweeter than Salt” (2014) is a little girl’s dress made from US military uniforms and accessorized with, among other things, pierced ¢25 coins. Inspired by a Pashtun folk tale about an Afghan princess, the piece’s form is initially disarmingly endearing. Only then do its charged materials and themes of war, exploitation, and sexual violence hit you. (text Hyperallergic, 2015)