Sarita Westrup: a tender line

May 14- June 17, 2023

Cluley Projects
2123 Sylvan Ave.
Dallas, Texas

images by Kevin Todora

"CLULEY PROJECTS is pleased to announce a tender line, a solo exhibition by Dallas-based artist Sarita Westrup. Westrup is one of two winners of the 2022 Annual Cluley Projects Open Call. 
 
'The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms, it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country — a border culture.'
— Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
 
Reflecting on memories of growing up in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border, fiber artist Sarita Westrup translates “border culture” sensibilities into her practice of experimental weaving. By crafting fenced patterns and enclosed structures that appear in cylindrical shapes, she creates channels and passageways out of once impermeable planes. Her sculptures depict abstracted representations of movement, establishing paths that declare their own horizon line. In doing so, Westrup creates a dynamic visual language of and for the borderlands.
 
As she crossed the border into Mexico (and back again), Westrup saw agave plants, rocks smoothed by the Rio Grande, and the raw concrete of immigration checkpoints. These childhood memories surface within the artist’s chosen media of metal, mortar, reed, and Tampico fibers (which come from the agave plant). Traditional North and Central American processes are also employed through the use of cochineal, a vibrant dye derived from crushed cochineal insects. Such material familiarity grounds Westrup’s artistic practice in the in-between of border towns’ political, cultural, and ecological realities.
 
In the exhibition, a tender line, Westrup continues her rich experiments in sculpture, basketry, and drawing. Her tunnel-like forms fill their environments, stretching onto the walls and sprawling out onto the floor. Inspired by her transient experiences and aspirations for a borderless future, the works mimic the imposing walls and fences in the South Texas landscape and reimagine them as migratory bodies. The use of baskets – a domestic tool meant for transporting, carrying, cradling – conveys nuanced themes of agency, tenderness, and concepts of home.
 
a tender line will feature new sculpture, drawing, and site-specific installation. The exhibition’s programming will also include a workshop led by Westrup on sculptural basketry weaving techniques used in the making of her show."

written by Blake Bathman, staff member of Cluley Projects.