Miguel Arzabe: Tejido Cultural

Rather than using traditional materials such as alpaca wool or the now more commonly used synthetic yarns, the artist collects and archives ephemera from galleries and museums that reflect a Western art canon. By combining indigenous techniques and references together with the material ephemera of American and European contemporary art, Arzabe materializes the cultural production of a city into a geometric matrix, fusing his heritage with the contemporary culture of his present moment.  

Arzabe’s practice illustrates how our society communicates through printed material: they function as makers of the cultural zeitgeist that traces a specific place and time. The artist shares, “I am invested in the process of recuperation, an act of reinvesting old things with new energy.” Through the appropriation of material and images of works by other artists, Arzabe transforms the ephemera through indigenous practices, confronting the dominant narrative of Western art. Like the textiles of his Andean heritage, his weavings communicate complex stories through designs but with different media. Oscillating between form and content, nostalgia and presence, Arzabe methodically analyzes, deconstructs, and reverse-engineers markers of our time.