A four-day collaboration between artist Tanya Aguiñiga and weavers Bianca Dominguez, Sonia Kim, and Marcelle St. Bernard, Performance Crafting: Backstrap Weaving will transform MAD’s lobby staircase into a backstrap loom. Throughout the performance, presented as part of the exhibition Tanya Aguiñiga: Craft & Care, the artists will be connected to each other through the warp of the loom, simultaneously weaving dyed rope toward a meeting point—Aguiñiga on the second floor and her counterpart in the lobby. The artists will work in dialogue through an effective and affective process, responding and reacting to one another’s movements. Each day they will employ a different constraint, such as unbalanced tension or surveillance, that responds to or reflects on power structures.

Aguiñiga’s AMBOS project—featured prominently in Craft & Care—recently returned from a trip along the Texas portion of the US–Mexico border. The current political climate, which has elevated tensions and emotions in the border region, shifted the group’s focus away from art activations along the border to witnessing and documenting the unfolding narrative of separation, displacement, and terror. In response to the power dynamics to which they bore witness, Aguiñiga and her collaborators continue Aguiñiga’s “Performance Crafting” events, which use craft-based methodologies as a foundation for durational performance. These events connect craft to labor, community, and dialogue—highlighting the long history of the field as a communal form of making.