Heidi Kumao

STATEMENT

Ceres Gallery is pleased to present Heidi Kumao’s solo exhibition, Fabrications: Stitched and Animated. Kumao combines thread drawings and fabric cutouts on industrial felt to create minimalist images of conversations and relationships. Similar in form to a New Yorker cartoon, each piece distills the emotional and psychological tenor of an interaction down to a single key moment. 

These textile and animated works are episodic, a collection of potent moments fabricated from memory, and stitched together as necessary parts of a greater whole. Reimagined using sewing, fabric cutouts, thread and wool, these tactile depictions are intentionally imperfect, missing details much like any recollection. In the current political climate truth is often sidelined or distorted, and facts dismissed as fabrications. These works resist this erasure by highlighting personal storytelling as a necessary and powerful tool of preservation. By freezing moments of vulnerability and precariousness, the textile works focus on the unspoken power dynamics of workplace and domestic relationships.

The stop motion animations, “35 Days” and “LADIES.” are also composed from a series of discrete moments and use humor and absurdity to recount lived experiences from the pandemic and mid-20^th century office culture. In “35 Days,” neighborhood callers provide clues (some helpful and some not) in the search for a lost cat, ultimately weaving together and revealing a community of care during the most isolating period in modern history. “LADIES.” uses physical slapstick to imagine and disarm the stereotypical roles and invisible gender politics that exist in traditional workplaces. 

Heidi Kumao
Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
2000 Bonisteel Blvd.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
hkumao@umich.edu
www.heidikumao.net