Sympoiesis: making with
exploring the material culture of the Southern California Fibershed
February 25 - April 8, 2023
“The fibershed wardrobe was a vernacular that communicated the wild, naturalized, and domesticated diversity of my home region....[it] was a living expression of where I live, what values I have, and what sort of community I belong to.”
Southern California Fibershed announces the opening of its first gallery show Sympoiesis: making with, in partnership with Studio 203. Opening February 25 and running through April 8, 2023, the exhibition explores how one of humanity’s oldest craft and industrial forms––the making of clothing––has shaped our relationship to the land, our bodies, and each other.
The title calls up author and scholar Donna Haraway’s neologism sympoiesis, or making with, the idea that we are creatures of the earth in a dance of co-creation. Director of the So Cal Fibershed and instigating curator Lesley Roberts explains, “Sympoiesis is a hybrid art show–social practice that follows the threads linking our agricultural and economic ecosystems, and our wellbeing, with what we wear.”
For thousands of years, people have transformed animal- and plant-based fiber to craft garments that clothed and protected their bodies, offered decoration, and ultimately engendered a radical and disruptive transformation of the earth, cultures, and economies. Many of us recognize fashion as aspirational, highly profitable, and innovative, yet clothing’s humble origins, necessity, and profound implications for our wellbeing and that of the earth is under-appreciated, and often feels mysterious. Fiber-based work embodies generations of cultural skills and concepts; our disconnections from the sources of the material we wear and the knowledge of how that material is transformed is a rupture of our natural relationships to the earth and each other. This intimate exhibition is a journey through local ecosystems and craft traditions, entwining instructional didactics, handmade garments, weavings, video and tactile components to draw connections between soil, plant, animal, work, hand, and body.
Lesley continues, “It was important for us to present these fibershed systems in the context of an art exhibit, to frame the work in a space more commonly associated with challenging or transformative experiences. Caring for our soil, raising healthy plants and animals, and making our clothing, working with our hands, is a profoundly grounding experience. These practices have the power to transform how we live in the world and how we understand our belonging to the world.
To quote bell hooks, ‘The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.’ We hope the audience will be impressed with the artistry in these garments, but more than that we’d like to introduce them to the richness of the ecosystem in which they live. If we inspire someone to visit a farm, mend an item of clothing, support regenerative agricultural practices or vote in ways that protect people and land, then we’ve leveraged art and craft in a socially positive way. The exhibit is part exposure of what is, and part aspiration for what could be.”
Gallerist and co-curator Aneesa Shami Zizzo adds, “Partnering with the So Cal Fibershed allows us to operate in a space that challenges traditional art hierarchies by providing an exhibition opportunity for craftspeople and activists alike.”
Works on display include a coat crafted by Patricia Mulcahy, Joyce Dulch, Liz Jones, Margaret Tyler, Stacy Swenck, and Mary Saxton of the San Diego Creative Weavers Guild; a ruana and accessories by Shannon Anderson, Teresa Camarillo, Michelle Gannes, Cindy Hahn, Melissa Hanson, Judy Hersh, Kait Hilliard, Deborah Low, Susie Meach, Allyson Swaney, Deb Thompson, and Betty Villafana of the Ventura County Handweavers and Spinners Guild; and sweaters from LA-based artisanal clothing brand Greg Lauren.
Sympoiesis is curated by cultural producer and social entrepreneur Lesley Roberts, director of the Southern California Fibershed chapter, and artist-researcher Aneesa Shami Zizzo, co-owner and director of Studio 203.
“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members—among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy.” — Wendell Berry
“Garments can be a route into a bigger ecological context in which human and other natural-world relationships unfold. They can be a way to get closer to places in which we live and the many others that live there, too. In showing this interdependence between garments and nature as a part of life and living, what we wear has ecological agency. We see how clothes can change our relationships with the natural world.”
— Kate Fletcher, Wild Dress
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The exhibit is presented by Material Encounters, fiscal sponsorship is provided by SIMA Studios. Sponsors include Blackberry Farm at Kelly Gulch, Cameron Taylor-Brown, Ruth Katzenstein Souza, and Deb Thompson.
About Lesley Roberts
Lesley Roberts works and plays in the spaces between culture, material, and imagination. She is a creative strategist, community builder, and social entrepreneur. She is the founder of Material Encounters, director of the Southern California chapter of Fibershed, and co-founder and former Executive Director of Textile Arts | Los Angeles. She initiated Los Angeles Textile Month and the conferences Mindful Materials (2018), Materiality & Method (2019), and Material Dialogues (2020). She has been invited to speak at the UCLA Costume Design Department (Sustainability and the Eco-System of Fashion), American Craft Council (Future Insights: The Future of the Creative Economy), and Regenerative Rising (Women in the Wardrobe), among others. Sympoeisis: making with is her first curatorial endeavor.
About Aneesa Shami Zizzo
Aneesa Shami Zizzo is an artist and arts-based researcher in Los Angeles using recycled materials to create fiber art. Her work references the sublime and world mythologies to evoke a sense of the collective unconscious within her imagery. Zizzo’s work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums. She recently created costumes for Planet City (2020), directed by Liam Young, which was commissioned for the NGV Triennial 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Zizzo is also the co-owner and director of Studio 203, an artist-run project space in Los Angeles featuring exhibitions, workshops and performances.
About Studio203
Studio 203 was established in February 2020 to collaborate with forward-thinking individuals and support fellow artists. We are an artist-run project space offering thoughtful programming through exhibitions, workshops and performances. Our mission is to provide a platform for artists that thrives beyond the sphere of traditional art hierarchies.