Ana Perez-McKay Artist Reception • February 13th

The body of work that is Uncharted uses multiples and combinations of discarded and sentimentally valuable materials, especially reused textile and fiber, to introduce conflicting notions of memory, truth, and meaning. A fiber series is displayed parallel to a paper series, where sister iterations of the same object relate and reflect. The “double” objects are different and the same, ambiguous in sequence (is paper a mockup for quilt? Does quilt inspire documentation on paper?) and use color, shape, and lace detail in physical form and printed impression to refer to the same simple decorative imagery drawn from private experiences and memories. Dual and multiple meanings can arise when we meditate upon the literal history of an object, in contrast to what can be known and formally articulated. In Uncharted, the most recent stage of the human history of these materials is made visible up close, in physical imprint, color mixing, and stitch. Visual elements of formal simplicity, flatness, and the quietly surreal help to embody a tension between fantasy and reality. The processes of patchwork and paper impression imitate the flattening and transformation of overwhelming amounts of information and excess and waste into something new and different. This type of redefinition is a pattern of meaning-making that the artist can’t stop seeing and considering from many directions: The whole story of a textile product, for example, from seed or fracked oil to processing plant to sweatshop to consumer to landfill or incinerator in the Global South is easy to ignore — it is much more comfortable to understand a piece of clothing as something that can passively materialize, be owned, then disappear forever. These histories and the human workers involved are unknown and devalued via commodity fetishism, but remain true of an object no matter how amnesiac participants in the system that demands its production may be. There are endless examples of transformation and synthesis to explore, but with this work the artist hopes to quietly invite reflection on the obfuscation of the origins and development of the culture, industry, and hegemony that colors and informs contemporary Western life in ways that can feel inevitable, but are not. Meaning without nuance that excuses and absolutizes hierarchy, especially to violent ends, must be challenged. This artist wants transformation to be possible.

Ana Perez-McKay (UNR BFA ‘22) is a Reno artist primarily working in print and textile, also incorporating elements of illustration and painting to create bold and dreamlike images and objects. Her practice physically flits between the communal space of the print studio and the more private and domestic settings in which sewing and craft take place.  At present, Ana is interested in the divisions of contemporary Art/Craft that are entangled with a myriad of hierarchies, which she understands to be a microcosm of how widespread systems of oppression are legitimized through culture. Ana has exhibited at The Holland Project Galleries, UNR galleries, and the Erik Lauritzen Gallery, and spends most of her days behind the cutting counter at Mill End Fabrics.