ABOUT

Indira Allegra is a conceptual artist and founder of Indira Allegra Studio - using weaving as a conceptual framework to craft living structures off the loom and in the world. A living structure can be performed as a song, a memorial, a text, or the movement of human and non-human behavior across a rolling planet. Of importance, are desires for transformation which haunt sites and beings experiencing them. Thinking as a poet, threads of connection between disparate experiences can be discovered. Moving as a weaver, the fates of seemingly disconnected histories, objects and beings are interlaced and transmuted into a greater whole.

Allegra's work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Art Journal, BOMB Magazine, e-flux, SF Chronicle, KQED and ARTFORUM and in exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Arts Incubator in Chicago, Center for Craft Creativity and Design, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Museum of the African Diaspora among others.

Allegra's writing has been featured in Theater, TEXTILE: Cloth and Culture, American Craft Magazine, Panorama Journal, Manual: A Journal About Art & Its Making, Leonardo and Foglifter Journal among others. They have been the recipient of numerous awards including Creative Capital, United States Artists Fellowship, Burke Prize, Gerbode Choreographer Award, Art Matters Fellowship, Mike Kelley Artist Project Grant and CripTech Metaverse Fellowship.

LISTEN

On Episode 1.04. Finding a New Constellation in Our Grief, Five and Nine podcast welcomes artist Indira Allegra to talk about collective grief, calling vs. career, staying true to our many selves, and giving names to our devices. Five and Nine Podcast newsletter exists at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice, produced by Dorothy R. Santos, Xiaowei R. Wang and Ana Mina (aka An Xiao).

ETHOS

Space is not passive.

There is no such thing as a ‘blank’ or ‘open’ space geographically, visually or ideologically.

Everything is animate.

You might be a visitor or newcomer in someone else’s territory or neighborhood. Find out who was there before you got there.

Build an altar to your creative and intellectual ancestors. Tend to it.

Loss is a normal part of the human experience so attention to grief and loss is always timely.

Support artists who are making work you can’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t make.

Support artists you aren’t attracted to sexually.

Ask yourself if you can answer a question or impulse without an object before you make another object for the Earth to hold. Ask yourself if you can use used/biodegradable materials. Material production + storage = water and oil.

Identify where you need help or are lacking the proper expertise to make an idea come to life.

Compensate all workers contributing to your studio practice in a timely way.

Poaching creative ideas from studio assistants, students, lesser known or marginalized artists is an act of colonialism.

Sexual harassment, assault or emotional abuse of team members, collaborators, assistants, colleages or fellow artists is violence, it is not ‘how things are done’ or ‘how things get done’.

Consider if there are permissions you need to ask for to make a work.

Build your legacy through mentorship of other artists and collecting works by artists who are born and raised in the place(s) where you are currently working or you have been a visitor to.

An artist is worth more than their productivity - take time off every season from your studio and put your vacation responder on.

Identify moments where it is most ethical to self fund a project.

All artists have cultural, economic and gender experiences which influence, in part, their understanding and production of their work.

Without thought and research, objects and experiences would not exist, therefore artists are thinkers and researchers.

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

Thought Partner: Shushan Tesfuzigta | shushantesfuzigta.com

ABOUT

LISTEN

ETHOS

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

CV