KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY

Exhibition Dates

KMAC: March 3 - April 9
Reception: March 3
Artist talk: April Dauscha March 18
Artist talk: Nneka Kai March 30

TSA GVL: April 21 - May 20
Reception: May 5

Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville (TSA GVL) artist collective and KMAC Museum are excited to present Holding Pattern, a 6-artist exhibition that investigates fiber arts as a form of modern technology in Louisville, KY and Greenville, SC.

Over the past decade, the value of what we call “technology" became largely correlated with its ability to gather and hold information — data. Today — in algorithms and AI, science and social media — the highest value is assigned to technologies that hold data and the stories that can be derived from it to give it meaning.

But is this really new? Holding Pattern examines how fiber arts helped create the template for our current understanding of what makes a technology valuable, and how contemporary works deserve consideration as technologies that hold both data and story. And, while fiber artwork that employs contemporary digital is usually framed as doing something “new,” it actually reveals a relationship that already existed.

Artists
Danielle Burke, April Dauscha, Nneka Kai, Elysia Mann, Keysha Rivera, Skye Tafoya

Co-curated by
Tiffany Calvert, Jennifer Oladipo & Kelsey Shaeffer, members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville

Artist Bios

Danielle Burke
Danielle (Dani) Burke is an artist and folklorist. She studies textiles, craft pedagogy, and artist communities; her studio practice focuses primarily on the structure and storytelling potential of woven cloth. She is currently a PhD student in Design Studies (history) within the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

April Dauscha
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, April Dauscha received her BFA in fashion design at the International Academy of Design and Technology and her MFA in fiber from Virginia Commonwealth University. April has served on the board of directors for the Surface Design Association (SDA) and is one of the founding members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville (TSA GVL). She has been represented by Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia and her work has been featured in Vogue Portugal. She has exhibited her work nationally, at the Fuller Craft Museum, MANA Contemporary, and Tracey Morgan Gallery, and internationally in Berlin, Cape Town, Jerusalem, and Belgrade. She is currently heading the fiber arts program at the Fine Arts Center, a performing and visual arts high school, in Greenville, South Carolina. Her work can be seen here at www.aprildauscha.com .

Nneka Kai
Nneka Kai is an interdisciplinary artist from Atlanta, GA, whose practice is rooted in the exploration of personal and archival narratives through the material of hair. She received her MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a research assistant at the Textile Resource Center. There she explored the history and conservation aspects of textiles within the Fiber & Material Studies collection. Not seeing herself represented in the objects, she decided to research the peripherals of textiles, in hopes of uncovering Black women’s material sensibilities throughout the diaspora. She also received her BFA from Georgia State University, where her material studies sparked her curiosity for hair. Currently, Nneka’s studio practice explores these findings through fiber, sculpture, and performance works, emphasizing methods of abstraction and opacity. She has performed her works in Chicago, Atlanta, and North Carolina. In 2021, Nneka exhibited in the Hair Stories Exhibition at The Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island. She is currently working as an art teacher while exploring her home in Atlanta, Georgia as a site of Black presence and preservation.

Elysia Mann
Elysia Mann is a studio technician at the University of Tennessee and is a member of Knoxville’s Relay Ridge community studios and printshop. She was the co-founder of a collaborative print shop in St. Louis called All Along Press where she published fine art prints and letterpress editions. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Tennessee. Her work combines print, textile, and poetry and has been shown nationally including upcoming exhibitions at the KMAC Museum in Louisville and Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Greenville. Website: elysiaaileenmann.com.

Keysha Rivera
Keysha Rivera is a textile and media artist of Afro-Indigenous ancestry. Rivera combines traditional craft and contemporary digital technologies. Her work revolves around cultural preservation and the configuration of displaced histories.

Her work being rooted in the connection of material and process, she creates soft sculptures, paintings, and installations that point to the conversation around the vulnerability of home, Caribbean identity and the tenderness of memory and remembrance.

Her familial research acts as a guide for the creation of works. By centering Puerto Rican liberation, her art functions as a contemporary form of resistance to the present-day realities.

Skye Tafoya
skye tafoya is an indigenous artist from the eastern band cherokee and santa clara pueblo tribes. her tribal heritage and lineage are significant components continuously present within her artwork. skye comes from a lineage of basket-weavers, both paternal and maternal, and also used to make red willow baskets with her dad. skye continues to use paper-weaving processes to honor her loved ones and ancestors. her meticulously crafted designs, patterns, prints, and weavings are influenced by basketry and contains themes of cultural teachings, cherokee language preservation, motherhood and personal & family narratives. skye creates with the intention of archiving, preserving and sharing stories, language, culture, and experiences.  

skye has worked in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms ranging in sizes from hand-held to life-size. the methods of her art practice include serigraph (screen-printing), relief and letterpress printmaking, digital design, paper-weaving, and book-making.

skye published her first artist book, ul’nigid’, in the spring of 2020 and has exhibited work nationally and internationally in russia. her work is also housed in many special collections including the u.s. library of congress, kohler art library, and the bainbridge museum of art. she received her b.f.a. from the institute of american indian arts in santa fe, nm and her m.f.a. from the pacific northwest college of art in portland, or.