Home / Books / Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

Art, Weaving, Vision

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood cover image Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 416

Illustrations: 95 color illustrations

Published: August 2022

Editors: Laura E. Pérez, Ann Marie Leimer

Contributors: Constance Cortez, Karen Mary Davalos, Carmen Febles, M. Esther Fernández, Christine Laffer, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Robert Milnes, Jenell Navarro, Marcos Pizarro, Verónica Reyes, Clara Román-Odio, Carol Sauvion, Cristina Serna, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, Luís Valdez, Emily Zaiden

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s artwork is marked by her compassionate and urgent engagement with a range of pressing contemporary issues, from immigration and environmental precarity to the resilience of Indigenous ancestral values and the necessity of decolonial aesthetics in art making. Drawing on the fiber arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Chicana feminist art, and Indigenous fiber- and loom-based traditions, Jimenez Underwood’s art encompasses needlework, weaving, painted and silkscreened pieces, installations, sculptures, and performance. This volume’s contributors write about her place in feminist textile art history, situate her work among that of other Indigenous-identified feminist artists, and explore her signature works, series, techniques, images, and materials. Redefining the practice of weaving, Jimenez Underwood works with repurposed barbed wire, yellow caution tape, safety pins, and plastic bags and crosses Indigenous, Chicana, European, and Euro-American art practices, pushing the arts of the Americas beyond Eurocentric aesthetics toward culturally hybrid and Indigenous understandings of art making. Jimenez Underwood’s redefinition of weaving and painting alongside the socially and environmentally engaged dimensions of her work position her as one of the most vital artists of our time.

Contributors. Constance Cortez, Karen Mary Davalos, Carmen Febles, M. Esther Fernández, Christine Laffer, Ann Marie Leimer, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Robert Milnes, Jenell Navarro, Laura E. Pérez, Marcos Pizarro, Verónica Reyes, Clara Román-Odio, Carol Sauvion, Cristina Serna, Emily Zaiden

Praise

“Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s extraordinary body of work receives a richly detailed analysis in this comprehensive and nuanced anthology that brings out the layered, playful, and decolonial aspects of her innovative fiber art. A critical contribution to Chicanx art history, borderlands studies, and the history of textiles in the United States, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision, pulls together an impressive chorus of scholarly and poetic voices that sing to the true spirit of the artist’s work.” - Jennifer A. González, coeditor of Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology

“This unique and important study of the work of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood offers insightful understandings and analyses that will bring long-overdue attention to her career. Illuminating and authoritative, this is the go-to book for scholars, students, and general audiences on Jimenez Underwood.” - Adriana Zavala, author of Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender, and Representation in Mexican Art

"With the publication of the important book . . . art lovers are treated to a full account of the life, creative processes, vision,  and accomplishments of a great Latina artist.  . . . The editors . . . have greatly enhanced our knowledge of an important American artist of craft and fine arts." - Ricardo Romo, Latinos in America

"It is a joy to see Jimenez Underwood’s work as a teacher addressed and to read about her influence on students. Essays are supported by excellent images and a strong introduction. A significant notes section points to additional research. This excellent resource will be good for courses that expand on the understandings of textile art and art history. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - L. L. Kriner, Choice

"This is the first scholarly volume devoted exclusively to the artist, beyond the few, albeit important, catalogues that have accompanied exhibitions of her art. As such, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Art, Weaving, Vision provides a welcome opportunity to assess the state of scholarship on the artist and to consider resources for future research." - Matthew Simms, Woman's Art Journal

Buy

Availability: Loading...

Price: Loading...

Request a desk or exam copy

Information

Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

Back to Top
Laura E. Pérez is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Eros Ideologies: Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial and Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities, both also published by Duke University Press.

Ann Marie Leimer is Professor of Art at Midwestern State University and a scholar and curator of Chicanx art.

Table Of Contents

Back to Top
List of Illustrations  xi
Preface. The Art of Necessity / Luis Valdez  xv
Acknowledgments  xvii
Introduction / Laura E. Pérez and Ann Marie Leimer  1
I. Spinning—Making Thread
1. The Hands of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: A Filmmaker's Reflections / Carol Sauvion  25
2. Charged Objects: The Multivalent Fiber Art of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood / Christine Laffer  35
II. Weaving—Hand Work
3. History/Whose-Story? Postcoloniality and Contemporary Chicana Art / Constance Cortez  53
4. A Tear in the Curtain: Hilos y Cultura in the Art of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood / Amalia Mesa-Bains  71
5. Prayers for the Planet: Reweaving the Natural and the Social—Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Welcome to Flower-Landia / Laura E. Pérez  80
6. Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Welcome to Flower-Landia / María Ester Fernández  91
7. Between the Lines: Documenting Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Fiber Pathways / Emily Zaiden  100
8. Flags, the Sacred, and a Different America in Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Fiber Art / Clara Román-Odio  111
9. Garments for the Goddess of the Américas: The American Dress Triptych / Ann Marie Leimer  123
10. Space, Place, and Belonging in Borderlines: Countermapping in the Art of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood / Karen Mary Davalos  142
11. Decolonizing Aesthetics in Mexican and Xicana Fiber Art: The Art of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood and Georgina Santos / Cristina Serna  161
12. Reading Our Mothers: Decolonization and Cultural Identity in Consuelo Jimenez Underwood's Rebozos for Our Mothers / Carmen Febles  181
13. Weaving Water: Toward an Indigenous Method of Self- and Community Care / Jenell Navarro  198
III. Off the Loom—Into the World
14. Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Artist, Educator, and Advocate / Robert Milnes  221
15. Being Chicanx Studies: Lessons for Racial Justice from the Work and Life of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood / Marcus Pizarro  239
16. Blue Río Tapestries / Verónica Reyes  244
Notes  261
Bibliography  290
Contributors  304
Index  311

Rights

Back to Top

Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Rights and licensing

Additional Information

Back to Top
Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1832-2 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-1569-7 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2293-0 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022930