Solo Exhibition by Michelle Inez Hinojosa 

MSU Union Art Gallery

Exhibition Dates: 11/3-12/12 | Reception: Friday, 11/21 6-8pm | Artist Talk at 7pm

The viewer can choose to engage at either a rapid or slow pace, both of which shift understanding in differing ways. The pace of the animation resists comprehension of form and relationships between the colors, while the scale and folding of the quilt block tapestry is too large to be viewed simultaneously. The ways these pieces resist complete recognition is contrasted against the exposure of the seams of the quilt block tapestry because what is typically hidden within the layers of a quilt is instead highlighted.

Square oil paintings that hang over the alcove also reference quilting through the use of the half square triangle, a foundational element common in many geometric quilting blocks. Here, a sense of improvisation and play are contrasted with subtle color relationships that are central to the construction and flow of the pieces.

The emphasis on relationships between colors and their movement through space throughout this installation is an expression of a border sensibility that is central to my lived experience in Texas and the United States. While sitting at my sewing machine piecing the colorful fabric, my mind can’t help but draw connections to the formation of this nation. I compare the length of the off-the-bolt fabric to one length of land, which is measured by surveyors’ tools and by my clear ruler and fabric pen, then cut by treaties and wars and by my rotary blade, which is then reconstituted by memory of the people and by the seam of my sewing machine, only to be flattened by political ideology and by my hot iron. This process continues until there is a nation and there is a quilt.

Michelle Inez Hinojosa is a Latina artist and educator from Texas. She holds an MFA in Art from the University of Michigan (2023) and a BFA in Art Education and Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas (2018). She has shown her work at the Woskob Gallery in State College PA, University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor MI, The Ann Arbor District Library, Art Room in Fort Worth TX, and the MAC in Dallas TX. Residencies include the Virgina Center for Creative Arts in Amherst VA, Mildred’s Lane in Narrowsburg NY and Creative Careers Artist in Residence in Ann Arbor MI.

Her practice encompasses poetry, public art projects, painting, quilting, and tapestry bead weaving to share the complex, multigenerational, Latinx experience of migration, which is riddled with grief, delight, and displacement.