Artist Kelly Tapia-Chuning
The Creative Edit: Kelly Tapia-Chuning
Posing five questions to new emerging contemporary artists and creatives, we take an informal yet quick and engaging view of their creative practice. Viewers get to discover more about the new generation of artists + creatives helping shape and narrate the creative landscape.
"Ancestor once known; we remember," 2024, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), secondhand cholla skeleton from Arizona, handmade copper hooks, copper nails, drywall screws, 81 1/2 x 37 x 6 inches
About the Artist
“body stained, nourished / restoring heart,” 2024, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket) stained with tuna pigment, copper nails, 46 x 65 inches
Kelly Tapia-Chuning (b. 1997, California) is a mixed Xicana artist of Indigenous descent raised in southwestern Utah, and currently based in Salt Lake City. Tapia-Chuning's work forms as a response to histories of assimilation—a praxis in opposition to these histories—utilizing genealogical and historical research, textile appropriation and deconstruction, and large-scale needle-felting to examine the power dynamics attached to racial identity/culture, gender, and language.
Tapia-Chuning received an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she was awarded a Gilbert Fellowship, and is the 2023 recipient of CAA's Professional Development Fellow in Visual Arts Award. Tapia-Chuning's work has been included in exhibitions with the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, The Shepherd (MI), Kimball Art Center (UT), GAVLAK (LA), Cranbrook Art Museum (MI), Eric Firestone Gallery (NYC), Onna House (NY & FL), among others, with solo exhibitions with Red Arrow Gallery (TN) and Harsh Collective (NYC). Tapia-Chuning has been an artist in residence at Stove Works (TN) and Zion National Park (UT). Her work has been featured in Artnet News, Southwest Contemporary, Surface Mag, Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, Artsin Square, and Friend of The Artist. Tapia-Chuning's work is held in numerous private and public collections across the US, including: Cranbrook Art Museum, The Bunker Artspace, Onna House, the State of Utah Alice Merrill Horne Art Collection, and the Southern Utah Museum of Art.
“blood of my blood, land of my blood, reborn,” 2023, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), obsidian gathered by my family in Utah, 81 x 90 x 4 inches approximately
Textiles/fiber art is one medium that is essential for storytelling, capturing familial legacies, and culture. How are you using textiles and fiber art to mine through your Xicana and Indigenous heritage and your selfhood?
Like my family's history and lineage, textiles are complex. They are part of our collective memory and represent our shared ancestral knowledge of working with natural materials. Throughout art history, textiles have often been politically and socially motivated, serving as a counterpoint to the prevailing "capitalistic, Western-centric, and patriarchal" cultures we see unravel. However, it's essential to recognize that textiles also have a history tied to colonization, labor, and exploitation, which cannot be overlooked in discussions about them.
This complex history is evident in the serape, a Mexican blanket that plays a key role in my current work. By utilizing the serape—an iconic symbol of Mexican patriotism with both colonial European and Indigenous origins—I aim to acknowledge history while reimagining the future, broadening discussions surrounding Indigeneity and colonial impacts within cultural representation. Through the deconstruction of the serape and its history, I am challenging the system of assimilation that has affected not only my family but many others as a by-product of colonization. My work examines this traditional "Mexican" textile to prompt questions and inquiry, reframing the conventional narratives of dominant visual representation. By removing parts of the serape, I signal a dismantling of the systems within colonial power structures.
Walk us through your creative process from when you have an idea in your mind to the finished piece?
Each body of work is different, but I am dismantling serapes (Mexican blankets) right now, and each piece begins with the dazzler at the center. The dazzler design has Indigenous origins throughout the continent, and I aim to preserve this symbol while drawing inspiration from it. The process starts by laying the blanket on the floor and sitting with it, allowing my instincts to guide me from the dazzler to a specific direction, design, and earth material (or medicine). Since I bought the blankets secondhand, I do not have any information about the original artisans who wove them. However, considering the contemporary and historical context of Mexico's craft industries, it is likely that the artisans are of Native origin. Although the textiles are mass-produced, I see the center dazzler motif as a unique expression of the maker's creative agency since no two dazzlers are the same. Each piece represents a collaboration with those who came before me and serves as a conversation with my ancestors, with my hands acting as a conduit for their voices.
When I have a direction for a design I am trying to create, I will tape the design and begin dismantling the serape, picking and pulling one row of weft out at a time. My tape marks will indicate what area I am cutting. Since the serape is in a grid, I can create any shapes within a grid formation. I play with geometric patterns or shapes as a way of [re]connecting to Indigenous visual culture. Once I am in the ritual of dismantling, I pay attention to what I feel in my body, meditating on what the blanket is bringing up memories—ancestral and personal.
I tend to work on several blankets at a time. Given that I frequently travel and move across the US, I have to figure out the logistics of accessing certain materials and plant medicine that aren't grown or made (such as obsidian and prickly pear cacti) in the areas I currently live in. Friends and family assist in the process when I am away, and it's a way of connecting with them even while apart.
I feel like the work is "done" when it is given a name/title. Speaking a name solidifies my intention with a work and provides a glimpse into the thoughts and feelings that went into the creation of the piece.
“My practice critically examines how "mestizaje" and assimilation have obscured individuality and ancestral knowledge through imperial-imposed representations, exploring the visual culture that emerged from colonization. My work aims to create new visual imagery to mend ancestral trauma and reconnect with cultures and familial histories that have long been forgotten.”
— Kelly Tapia-Chuning
“home is in the purple line cradled by the land,” what's above and below, 2023, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), dried desert globemallow harvested in southern Utah during a superbloom, handmade vessel made with reclaimed copper from Utah, copper nails, 79 x 50 x 9 inches
What are the recurring themes throughout your creative practice?
Recurring themes in my practice are cultural and racial identity, hybridity, and reclamation. Every new direction I take is based on where I am currently at in my journey of becoming—of finding a sense of place.
Can you detail your current body of work, Dismantled Serapes?
In post-revolutionary Mexico, the visual representation of mixture in the serape promotes the idea of a homogeneous national "mestizo/a" identity. As an act of decolonization, dismantling the serape has become a way to honor my ancestors and recenter the narrative around ancestral knowledge and Indigeneity. Through the dismantling process, the textile becomes vulnerable, reflecting my notions of identity and selfhood. Removing the weft reveals its imprint and unfurls a history that cannot be erased. However, the narrative can be recentered and recontextualized.
Using materials harvested from the land, in collaboration with the serapes, each piece becomes an assemblage—a gathering site that roots the work in a specific time and place. This creation process is ritualistic, establishing selfhood firmly situated in the land and stories of my ancestors while shedding light on the existing dichotomy between different spaces and cultures. In Gloria E. Anzaldúa's text "Light in the Dark," she describes the "process of falling apart" as a prerequisite for healing. Colonization disrupted my family's connection to our Indigenous culture and heritage, and I aim to restore those severed threads by deconstructing and reconstructing the serape. The work I create through ritual contributes to my own becoming, with the viewer or audience acting as a witness to this transformation.
Each piece represents a site of tension, revealing personal and familial histories marked by colonial violence. As a descendant of this violence, susto is the sickness that follows generationally. In Chicanx/a/o and Latinx/a/o communities, susto (meaning fright) refers to the ailment associated with a traumatic event that results in the soul's departure from the body. This phenomenon is often linked to the violence and loss of land and culture due to colonization. In my work, dismantling the serape is an act of healing this generational susto.
Detail of a work in progress
“voicing the silenced; we survive you,” 2024, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), reclaimed coyote skulls from a coyote “dump” site in southern Utah, copper nails, interfacing, 70 x 77 x 3 inches, Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection
“the beginning and the end, body and mind; by reclaiming we remember, by remembering we heal,” 2024 dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), creosote/greasewood harvested during winter in northern Arizona, approximately 92 x 80 inches
“Origin Mother,” 2024, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), maguey/agave fiber hand-dyed with indigo, copper nails, 63 x 71 inches
What hidden or unknown stories would you like to unravel as your practice evolves?
I actively search for my ancestors and their origins, a practice and reconnection I do not take lightly. I believe reconnection is a lifelong journey, and my work will naturally evolve over time. My work will continue highlighting the erasure of my family's histories and the challenges of discovering ancestral origins through colonial archives, especially after familial history has been affected by assimilation and erasure—since this process is constantly changing and evolving.
Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger discussed the original sin of colonization on the Broken Boxes podcast, explaining how it began in Europe when earth-based spiritual practices/religions were no longer practiced and outlawed. This notion is particularly relevant to my own lineage, as my father's family has Germanic and Slavic roots. I have seen how my Slavic ancestors' origins were also erased and obscured within the archives when they immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s. I often wonder what traditions and cultural practices were left behind when assimilating to "American" culture.
I didn't have any connection to my dad's family, so I naturally gravitated toward highlighting and deconstructing the history on my mom's side. This is also because her side feels closer to me, both by association and physically, in terms of racial power structures, as I grew up in a small town in a predominantly "white" area in southern Utah. We did not see my father's family often, and I could not distinctly remember any cultural traditions his family had.
As someone who is mixed-race/multicultural, I think there are still some questions I need to answer to genuinely know and understand where I come from. Those ancestors and lineages are also part of my story, no matter how complex and fraught that history is or might be.
“reliquary for Coyote / from flesh to dust, an altar for spirit,” 2024, dismantled serape (Mexican blanket) with salt crystals, found coyote jaw from Utah, copper nails, 60 x 61 x 1 inches
Bio, artist statement + images are courtesy of the artist.