Margo Wolowiec
Imagine How Many
2017
Imagine How Many, 2017
Imagine How Many by Margo Wolowiec is a woven polyester depiction of blurred text and floral images, distorted beyond complete recognition. It resembles a newspaper with a conspicuous “fold” down the middle, but its contents are undoubtedly drawn from Wolowiec’s practice of image aggregation and do not follow the clear formatting newspapers normally possess. Instead, Wolowiec has created an alternative publication of sorts, drawing in a third, comparative source of “networked” imagery and information, inserting the concept of publication into her greater examination of the structures governing dissemination.
Margo Wolowiec uses her multidisciplinary practice to examine space, material versus conceptual practices, and affective responses. Working predominantly with textiles, the artist aggregates “non-images” and controversial texts from the internet, she then creates complex, visually fragmented fabric compositions, which cut in and out like static. She analogizes the networked layering of woven fibers with the technological networks from which she draws her images, articulating a novel, analog means of imagining and relating to the greater technological ontology upon which contemporary society depends. Her forms are largely sourced from visualizations of glitches and aberrations found on Internet-based social networking platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. In translating pixelated images into fiber art through painstaking technique of hand dye and weaving, Wolowiec offers a wholly original response to producing art in the digital age by narrowing the gap between traditional practices of handcraft and contemporary modes of image making offered through new media technologies.