Sonya Clark, Angela Ellsworth, Ato Ribeiro @ Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix - "The Presence of Ancestors" Exhibition

The Presence of Ancestors

Sonya Clark, Angela Ellsworth, Ato Ribeiro

Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix

October 4 - December 27, 2025

The body's gestures of communication, taking form as practices of gathering and making, are passed on through generations and migrations. The presence of these ancestral voices in our contemporary existence is explored in Lisa Sette Gallery, which features the works of Sonya Clark, Angela Ellsworth, and Ato Ribeiro. Eminent presences on the gallery's roster, each artist has earned a reputation for their ability to transmute the spiritual and creative practices of their heritage into incisive and thoughtful contemporary works. The artists of The Presence of Ancestors examine and commemorate the survival of essential creative expressions that exist outside of the control of oppressive regimes, across vast global migrations, and throughout the arc of time.

Although each artist communicates with a distinctive voice, the works of Sonya Clark, Angela Ellsworth, and Ato Ribeiro share a foundation in materials and craft: Ato Ribeiro shapes salvaged wood scraps into lush, quilt-like works that are dense with symbols and contrasting colors and grains, merging the tradition of the Gee's Bend African American quilters and the woodworking and weaving traditions of the artist's Ghanaian background. The results are powerful, vibrant compilations of symbols, patterns, and structures that multiply and evolve before the viewers' eyes. Incorporating storytelling symbols from Ghanaian tradition and West African textiles, Ribeiro's works form profound topographies of pattern and movement, celebration and remembrance.

The artist's large-scale piece Madan Sara, included in the show at Lisa Sette Gallery, refers in title to the tradition of Haitian women who barter goods from one village to another, sustaining a network of local communities and economies. The term Madan Sara also refers to the village weaver, an African bird known for its sturdy nests, cleverly fashioned from strips of found material. The timeless and deeply compelling act of interweaving meanings, stories, and livelihoods is made tangible in Ribeiro's works. The artist remarks:

By employing familiar rituals-of collecting, joining and refining natural and repurposed materials-my research continues to mine and honor a variety of shared and neglected histories, in order to visually speak with a contemporary sense of cultural hybridity. 

Ribeiro's work makes explicit the interconnected modes of creativity and survival passed from deep time to present circumstances, complicating simplistic narratives of human progress. Similarly, Angela Ellsworth's surreal textile objects examine perceived notions of exclusively feminine spaces in history and reveal the long history of spiritual feminism, as well as the sister-wife cohort as an early queer/femme space.

Angela Ellsworth's ingenious works included in The Presence of Ancestors - bonnets and bloomers formed entirely of bristling pearl-tipped hatpins - are made through collective practices that involve community action and hearken to Ellsworth's family connection to the founders of Mormonism. In exquisite performances, rituals, and objects, Ellsworth's consideration of these often hidden feminine heritages gives rise to complex and transcendent expressions of place, self, and culture. Addressing the secret languages pulsing beneath officially-sanctioned accounts of history and religion, Ellsworth's mysterious, entrancing objects and performances draw lines of communication between her ancestors and her contemporary existence.

Sonya Clark's works deconstruct and rework common materials as an expressive means of connecting diasporic groups and unraveling the political pretensions of control. In doing so, she draws on the complexity of her Afro-Caribbean family: her Jamaican mother, Trinidadian father, and Scottish great-grandfather. Clark's work speaks of an American identity forged through slavery, immigration, love and an intergenerational linking of cultures. In wide-ranging work, Sonya Clark employs familiar objects such as coins, flags, and combs as creative circuits, connecting implicit cultural movements and meanings. Sonya Clark also includes African hair and braiding as a material laden with meaning, its texture and form delineating a specific space of culture and power. Twist, one of Clark's recent projects represented in The Presence of Ancestors, devises a letterpress alphabet inspired by the curl pattern of African hair. "Hair is power, it is a composite of all the ancestors who have gone before you," Clark has remarked, "It is a fibre that you can tell a story with."

Sonya Clark, Angela Ellsworth, and Ato Ribeiro call on processes and materials to articulate the presence of ancestors, communicating the strength of stories and identities over time and across continents, and reaching poignantly into our contemporary circumstances' uncertainty and transformation. Their work presents in contemporary form the works of an ancient human culture that has eluded the shackles of repressive political movements and the wealth-centered value systems, instead carrying forward the knowledge of ancestors to meet us at this present moment.

LISA SETTE GALLERY

210 East Catalina Drive, Phoenix, Arizona 85012

www.lisasettegallery.com

Tangled: Fiber Art Now! @ Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA

Tangled: Fiber Art Now!
Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA
Through February 11, 2018

Megan Whitmarsh (American, Contemporary) 

Studio Installation (detail), 2017 

Site-specific installation, Assorted fabrics and textiles 

Courtesy of the Artist

The Taubman Museum of Art presents Tangled: Fiber Art Now! featuring the work of 11 contemporary artists who are redefining how we perceive fiber arts such as knitting, quilting, crocheting and felting.

“Tangled features sculptures, installations, video and performance work using fiber-based materials. It offers an eclectic mix highlighting our connections to nature, the richness and diversity of our culture, our body and our environment through artists who are revolutionizing the use of textiles and fiber,” said Amy Moorefield, exhibition curator and deputy director of exhibitions and collections at the Taubman Museum of Art.

Textile art, which encompasses embroidery, fiber art, knitting, crochet and carpet design, has its roots in the invention of weaving some 27,000 years ago. It is one of the oldest forms of human technology. Artists throughout the ages explored innovations with the medium, and the term “fiber art” began to be used to describe the medium after World War II.

Historically regulated to “women’s work,” fiber art was embraced by the feminist art movement in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, artists have pushed the boundaries of fiber art through the exploration of the materials and techniques.

“Now artists are using fiber art to both define and challenge current social/political issues such as gender, notions of family and women’s work as well as experimentation with materials that may not necessarily be defined under the rubric of fiber such as terra cotta, pearled pins, and dirt,” said Moorefield.

Arizona-based artist Angela Ellsworth’s embroidered Seer Bonnets navigates issues of the body in relation to gender, sexuality and cultural histories of the western United States. Exploring the history of her Mormon grandfather and his polygamist relationships, the project re-imagines a community of women pioneering an alternative history.

West Coast-based artists Ben Venom and Jimmy McBride riff off of traditional quilting practices to create large-scale work based on the mysticism behind heavy metal music and science fiction stories.

Virginia-based artist Kristin Skees’ work combines portraiture, knitting and a love of DIY culture in her Cozy Portrait series, in which she creates a custom knit cozy for each person in the project. While the final form is a photographic portrait, for her, the piece begins with the first conversation, and the first question: “Can I cozy you?”

Emerging fiber artist Meg Arsenovic explores societal boundaries with her vibrantly colored faux fur sculptures.

Mexico City-based artist Xawery Wolski creates dresses out of thousands of handmade terra cotta beads. Each piece is hand-constructed, fired and then meticulously painted, all strung together by sturdy thread to create a sculptural piece in the shape of a dress.

Michigan-based fiber artist Mark Newport challenges stereotypes of men by hand-knitting acrylic super hero costumes, which he then wears.

“Knitting is very slow. That contradicts the idea of a superhero as a man or woman of action. The superheroes that I make are generally male superheroes,” said Mark Newport. “I like the contradiction that most people think about knitting as related to women.”

Both Oklahoma-based Rena Detrixhe and Los Angles-based Megan Whitmarsh have created site-specific installations for the exhibition.

Rena Detrixhe’s contemplative work combines repetitive process with collected or scavenged materials to produce large-scale objects and installations. For Tangled, she created a rug from harvested red clay gathered in the Midwest, stamped with oriental patterns.

Mega Whitmarsh's soft sculptural installations reference contemporary pop culture and the 1970s and 1980s eras of her childhood. For the exhibition, she created the impression of a 1970s artist studio.

Alice Beasley tackles politically charged events with her fabric portraits that touch on difficult memories such as the death of Trayvon Martin. Beasley said of her inspiration, “One of the great things about being an artist is that even if I can’t change the world, I still have an unfettered opportunity to express my opinions.”

Philadelphia-based artist Caitlin McCormick creates skeletal bodies out of crocheted cotton thread and glue that allude to bird species. She pins them to velvet backings in antique specimen tables as homage to her departed grandmother who crocheted and her grandfather who carved bird sculptures.

Pairing established artists with emerging figures, artists in Tangled explore new horizons being developed at this very moment in fiber art while redefining how we perceive this ancient art form.

Tangled: Fiber Art Now! is on view in the Medical Facilities of America Gallery and the Temporary Exhibition Gallery.

TAUBMAN ART MUSEUM
110 Salem Avenue SE, Roanoke, VA 24011
www.taubmanmuseum.org