Ochi Projects is pleased to present Your damp towel a solo-exhibition of Chicago-based artist Mia Weiner.

Your damp towel showcases five woven tapestries depicting photographic images of bodies entwined. Deeply hued and tonally saturated, the arrangements of models–with Weiner often featuring herself in the works– allude to an art-historical timelessness, though they have been digitally manipulated to erase body parts and surroundings, and to add other signifiers, like an aluminum can filled with wildflowers, that firmly root the images to a specific, contemporary moment. The textiles are woven by hand on a Jacquard loom, allowing for the intricate structures and specific color saturations of the woven patterns.

Threads bow where the image stops, tangling playfully along the walls edge, as a reveal of the materiality and tactility of the tapestry, creating webs that mirror the interlacement of bodies contained within. Mediating the photographic image through cloth, the tapestries begin to equalize the relationship between object and image. The work is about connection, both between bodies and cloth as a place of shared experience. Weiner stitches, knots, and weaves intimate declarations that explore both togetherness and attachment, intimacy and interdependence, identity and sexuality.

 Responding to the historical textile, Mia Weiner creates intimate declarations that explore identity, gender, and the psychology of human relationships. Mia currently lives and works in Chicago after leaving Brooklyn for her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020). Mia received her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013, and her work has been exhibited internationally including in New York, London, Berlin, Athens, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, and Washington DC.