Senga Nengudi: Warp Trance

For more than five decades, Senga Nengudi has been making art about movement, ritual, and collectivity. A leading figure of the avant-garde, she has created work from diverse materials, from water to sand to pantyhose, constantly bridging sculpture and performance. Her work has been featured in major solo exhibitions, most recently at the Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP); the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Dia Beacon, New York.

At the Fine Arts Center, Nengudi presents her multichannel video and audio installation Warp Trance (2007), which she developed during a residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Footage she recorded of mechanical jacquard looms is projected onto hundreds of laced-together perforated punch cards of the kind used in the weaving process—often cited as precursors to computer programming. This, combined with the mesmerizing sound of the looms in action, offers an immersive interplay of color, texture, and rhythm. A deconstruction of the textile-making process, Warp Trance brings Nengudi’s abiding interest in movement and ritual into conversation with historical industrial machinery and histories of labor.

The artist invites the public to walk or dance around the installation.

Top image: Installation view of Warp Trance (detail). Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers.