denirée isabel: Barkcloth and Me
As part of the digital component of Gathering, the Textile Museum partnered with the curatorial collective Mending the Museum. denirée isabel was one of six artists invited to interpret pieces from the Textile Museum’s collection.
denirée created the interactive PDF Barkcloth and Me in response to a fragment of bark cloth from Venezuela. Learn more about the Mending the Museum project here. Click on the link below to view denirée’s work .
Follow denirée isabel as she investigates the relationship between herself and the origins of Barkcloth: from Northern South America, Venezuela. Informed by the artist’s own ancestry DNA results, we explore the regions of the world that make up the ethnography of Venezuela. Through native trees, we speculate which of these could have contributed to this object and draw on the artist’s personal reflections, all in the pursuit of understanding an object that has little to no information about its origins, cultural significance or how it came to exist as the sole object from that region of the world to be within the Textile Museum of Canada’s collection.
denirée isabel is an artist, educator, and dreamer interested in large scale installation, performance, and participatory/community art. Navigating the sticky terrains of emotionality and presence, she creates spaces (physically and symbolically) that prioritizes sharing and healing. While upholding an ethos of experimentation, curiosity, and care.
With a BFA in Textiles a minor in Art History from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, an advanced diploma in Textiles from Sheridan College. She has completed residencies in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Harbourfront Center, Sur Gallery and The Powerplant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. She exhibits regularly in Toronto and Halifax.
