Saturday March 8, 2025
Ramekon O’Arwisters (American, 1960)
Bitten #8, 2022, Ceramic shards, fiber, zip ties, beads
“Rooted in the exploration of traditional textile and craft practices, the work of multimedia artist Ramekon O’Arwisters reflects his lived experiences as a Black and Queer man in the United States. Growing up in the de facto segregated Jim Crow South of the 1960s and 1970s and later moving to San Francisco during the pivotal 1990s—a transformative era for LGBTQ rights—O’Arwisters anchors his complex sculpture and socially engaged work in material and object politics, drawing from cultural, familial, and personal histories. These explorations materialize through a multitude of objects, including sharp ceramic shards, zip ties, leather, torture devices, and jewelry, which O’Arwisters densely knots, wraps, braids, and crochets into abstract forms using shredded fabrics. Through these combinations of found objects and craft techniques—many associated with domestic spaces, O’Arwisters investigates topics of intimacy, gender, race, and queer identity. Challenging the histories and inherent meanings of materials, O’Arwisters questions the neutrality or passivity of objects, while highlighting the pleasurable and painful histories they carry. These investigations into materialized emotion, spirituality, and trauma are uniquely informed by O’Arwisters’ background in divinity and his early connections to religious and spiritual practices. This is further reflected in his ideas and practice of crafting as an act of care, healing, and resilience—a concept rooted in childhood memories of his grandmother, Celia Jones Taylor, who first introduced him to quilt-making as a safe space for creative expression. This foundational experience resonates throughout O’Arwisters’ sculptural work and his socially engaged project Crochet Jam, which uses craft as a tool for healing, dialogue, and resistance, embodying his vision of art as a communal act of transformation and liberation.” from Craft Contemporary.
Ramekon O’Arwisters: HOUSE OF is currently on view at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles from February 1, 2025, through May 4, 2025.
Ramekon O’Arwisters is a San Francisco-based multimedia artist exploring textile and crafting traditions through found-object abstract sculpture and socially engaged community projects. Born in Kernersville, North Carolina, O’Arwisters earned an M.Div. from Duke University Divinity School in 1986. His works have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA), and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles (San Jose, CA). O’Arwisters has received numerous grants and awards, including the Artadia Fund for Art and Dialogue, the McLaughlin Foundation Award for The Project Space, and the Eureka Fellowship. His ongoing socially engaged community art-making project, Crochet Jam, has been presented at various institutions, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and ICA San Francisco.