While growing up in Mexico City, Gabriel Dawe was not allowed to learn how to sew simply because of his gender. Today, the Dallas-based artist challenges that idea by creating awe-inspiring art installations made of thread.
"I was trying to challenge those notions of gender identity that are a very big part of Mexican culture, and even American culture," Dawe said. "So by working with thread, I'm sort of trying to challenge those gender-based notions that restrict what we can and cannot do."
For the next two years, beginning on Aug. 16, one of Dawe's largest and most intricate installations, made with 60 miles of sewing thread, titled Plexus No. 34, will be on display in the Atrium of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The installation will highlight the architecture of the museum's renowned Phillip Johnson-designed building on the 15-year anniversary of the completion of the Atrium.
Dawe's installation, which will be on view until September 2018, is a part of a series of "indoor rainbows" he has been working on for the past five years, called Plexus, the word for the network of vessels that run through the body. He said each piece is conceived for the particular space and created in that space, and because of the colors he uses, each refers directly to light and fragmented light.
The completed installation will look like Dawe created a natural phenomenon of rainbow light and mist. "In reality, he hooks ordinary, industrial sewing thread from wall to wall in a repeating overlay to create this extraordinary optical illusion," says assistant curator Maggie Adler.
Dawe began installing the work inside the Atrium in early August with a mapped-out plan of the threads.
"It becomes this sort of back and forth between the characteristics of the space and the characteristics of the works, and how together they form something new," he said. "So every new piece is an opportunity to try to make something different than I have before.
By using a textile-like sewing thread and creating it on an architectural scale, Dawe said he is exploring the relationship between fashion and architecture and how they relate to the human need of shelter.
"When you use the material of one and the scale of the other, that sheltering quality gets transformed into the idea of shelter," he said, "not in the sense of typical sheltering, but in the sense of a psychological, mental and even spiritual and transcendent meaning."
Adler hopes visitors will take the time to stop and soak up Dawe's ethereal work. "I mean, people's jaw literally drop to the floor," Dawe said. "People often tell me that they're very soothing, just very relaxing, so that's when that sheltering quality sort of gets transformed into something more symbolic than physical."
