| Since the now-famous Panty Hose Pieces brought her to the forefront of the African-American avant-garde in the 70s, Senga Nengudi has been making art that explores the human body in all of its changeable forms and movements. From her early, biomorphic sculptural works to her current, more interior landscapes, Nengudi, who has a background in dance, has adamantly worked with “what is at hand,” both in the literal sense (readily available, discarded and free) and the figurative, in that she works with materials that can be shaped, molded and manipulated by the artist’s body. So, it may come as a surprise that her latest installation, Warp Trance, on view at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, takes its inspiration from the mechanization of labor: the very thing that removed the body from the processes of craft. Or so the story goes. |  |
Warp Trance – Mary Wilson
Since the now-famous Panty Hose Pieces brought her to the forefront of the African-American avant-garde in the 70s, Senga Nengudi has been making art that explores the human body in all of its changeable forms and movements. From her early, biomorphic sculptural works to her current, more interior landscapes, Nengudi, who has a background in dance, has adamantly worked with “what is at hand,” both in the literal sense (readily available, discarded and free) and the figurative, in that she works with materials that can be shaped, molded and manipulated by the artist’s body. So, it may come as a surprise that her latest installation, Warp Trance, on view at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, takes its inspiration from the mechanization of labor: the very thing that removed the body from the processes of craft. Or so the story goes. Nengudi, however, has a different take on the matter.
When she began her residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia , Nengudi was intrigued by Pennsylvania’s, and FWM’s, rich history in textile production. “I was interested in the idea of process,” she explained. “Instead of trying to create a project that was fabric, I wanted to create something that dealt with how it was made.” Nengudi visited a number of local textile mills and was fascinated by the repetitive sound and movement of the looms. “Initially I was going into it ethnocentrically. The machines looked almost like African masks, and the rhythm felt like drums.” Even the minimal gestures of the workers recalled a kind of dance. “They had to be very attentive. Even though they were standing in front of these machines for hours and hours, they had to be ready if anything went wrong, and would fix it with these very quick, craftsman-like hands.”
With the help of staff members at FWM, an institution that works with artists to create work in new materials and new media, Nengudi collected sound and video recordings from the mills and hundreds of Jaquard punch cards. The Jaquard loom was the first machine to use punch cards to control a sequence of operations, and it is therefore considered a precursor to computer hardware. These cards were then strung together to create a textile of sorts, one that potentially contains the story of its own creation. Nengudi then asked composer Butch Morris to turn the ambient sounds of the mills into a composition to accompany the three-channel video projected onto the finished textile.
The resulting installation, Warp Trance, leads the viewer into an almost trancelike state through repetitive motion and audio and visual rhythm. As the looms proceed with their mechanized dance, their movements begin to resemble those of a living organism walking the line between the seemingly random and the unfathomably complex. The projection bleeds through the holes in the punch cards, transforming the otherwise monochromatic textile into a wash of color and movement. Ideally, says Nengudi, the rhythm of sound and image will result in a trance that will engage both the mind and body of the viewer, encouraging the less self-conscious to participate in the dance themselves.
By re-involving the body in this mechanical process, Nengudi hopes to reveal the inner possibilities and outer manifestations of a trance-like state. “There’s good trance and there’s bad trance. Trance in its best form is transforming; it allows you to find your higher self, better self, spiritual self.” At its worst (TV, for example), a trance is blinding, passive and alienating—characteristics that many might associate with the drone of the workday and the hum of machinery. But in Nengudi’s hands, these things take on a transformative power of their own. Warp Trance, like many of Nengudi’s works, opens us up to the transformative power of movement.
