Nina Tichava – I’ll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time (Lantern Series)

$12,500

SKU: 24865

Artwork Description

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time
(Lantern Series)

Dimensions: 60 x 60″
Year: 2018
Media: acrylic, ink, charcoal, graphite, paper
and copper on panel

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time (Lantern Series) plays on the spatial and formal tension introduced by pairing geometric and organic shapes, seen in the horizontal and vertical lines occupying the various circles within the painting. Tichava uses mixed media to complicate traditional audience perceptions of painting, allowing varied materials such as charcoal and graphite to indicate her artistic and visual versatility.

Nina Tichava draws from her familial and personal ties to New Mexico to inform a body of work that can be described as both organic and geometric. Building upon her parents’ artistic practices, including photography and weaving, Tichava uses visual language to reference Native American culture and overcome the barriers imposed by her non-native heritage. While her mixed media works often use repetitive patterning, Tichava describes her work as abstract and informed by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, and Frank Stella. Her work relies on processes of layering, building intricate patterning and layers of pigment to generate finished products that are at once auto-biographical and visually complex; by superimposing colors and shapes, Tichava suggests that the various layers reference layers of personal experience. Tichava uses materials such as paper, paint, and beads to render three-dimensional weaving onto otherwise two-dimensional canvases, allowing her to work as weaver, painter, and sculptor and produce works that cannot be defined by a single genre.

By Keira Seidenberg, Art History/Gender Studies student, McGill University