On Grace, Glory, and Fake Gold: A Queer Tangent in Tapestry

Abstract

In this writing, I use the tangent as a queer methodology to craft an ontology of tapestry. Art historical anecdotes, familial immigrant stories, and queer declarations of faith are interwoven tangents that attempt, perhaps, to weave a tapestry of their own. Through this, I focus on my own studio production and engage the tangential positionality of weaving to consider tapestry as a form that mirrors the Catholic disavowal of queer people. The Magnificat tapestries discussed remediate Italian Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child as Jacquard woven tapestries. Appropriation, mutation, and decadence are manifested in these tapestries, and further examined through ethnic legacies and queer temporalities. Narratives of immigrant Marian devotion are met with musings on drag to consider their overlap and opposition. Throughout this writing I engage queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred to imagine, and offer, a queer vision of grace.

KEYWORDS:

• Tapestry
• weaving
• queer
• Madonna
• Catholicism
• Renaissance

Notes

1 Italian Harlem (literally “dear Harlem”).

2 “The great suffering of southern Italy, best translated as a slow dying, an emptying of hope and ambition in the face of oppression and neglect” (Orsi 2010: 18).

3 A sense of respect interweaving fear and love, and intimacy and distance (Orsi 2010: 228).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Paul Morabito

Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. Their work outputs woven forms, moving images, and performances that look toward a future-past horizon where one can exalt queer devotion and grace. They have exhibited internationally including the Zhejiang Art Museum; CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions; Fresh Window Gallery; Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects; Document; The Center for Craft; and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Collections include the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec and the Textile Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morabito holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they serve on the faculty as Assistant Professor, Adj. of Fiber and Material Studies.

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