EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Annette Cords
My work spans diverse media, from painting and weaving to installation and sculpture. I probe the possibilities of mark-making, examine writing systems and vernacular styles, and ask how we process and interpret visual information. For the past sixteen years, I have focused on Jacquard and hand weaving, particularly their material and cultural aspects. For me, weaving is a multi-faceted and nuanced form of expression that overlaps and augments developments in writing, painting, and abstraction.
In my tapestries and weavings, I explore the interrelationship of visual-textual languages and the play between formal variation and the construction of meaning. “How do we read visual information and establish meaning?” and specifically, “how do we decode our material culture?” are questions central to my work. Many of my forms and visual elements emerge from my everyday surroundings. I am interested in signage, typography, written words, and the visible mark of the hand, and how these elements co-occur, amplify, and overwrite each other.
The tapestries begin with drawings, photographs, and word pairings; elements are added, subtracted, and combined. I then take one weaving file, double back, and repeat part of it. The effect is filmic and glitchy, revealing a search for articulation and form through the playful making of the tapestry itself. In addition, I create weavings on my floor loom, where I rework traditional American patterns.
I like to encourage multiple perspectives and interpretations: the tapestries confer a tangible presence to intertwined words and images and hang from frames so that the front and the back can be viewed. Through the interaction of digital and analog ways of working, I link disparate elements—digital typefaces and drawn forms, visual weave structures and recognizable texts, pixel-based pictures and tactile surfaces. The unexpected juxtapositions and layering invite viewers to look closely and decipher new meanings.
