Carla Edwards
Workshop in Flag-making — A Film by Carla Edwards
Conceptual artist Carla Edwards provides a tutorial on flag-making and explains her process of dyeing, cutting, and sewing as a meditation on citizenship in the current moment. Tune in to learn more about Edwards’s manipulation of color and materiality to transform flags into new icons of personal identity and civic power. Gather your own flag materials and follow along in this creative process of deconstruction, intervention, and transformation.
Image above: Carla Edwards,The Blue, 2017, American flags, nylon dye, 41 x 40 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Carla Edwards (b. Illinois), lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work examines popular iconography and Americana vernacular through the lens of sculpture, performance, drawing, and video. She received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Edwards is a recipient of the Socrates Emerging Artist Fellowship, Smack Mellon Artist in Residence Fellowship and was awarded the Lighthouse Works Public Art Commission in 2018. She has been an artist in residence and studio fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Smack Mellon and The Fountainhead in Miami. Edwards has exhibited nationally and internationally most notably at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Crystal Bridges Museum, Artist Space, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Volta5, Basel Switzerland, The DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities, District of Colombia, Redline Arts, Denver and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been reviewed in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Colorado Public Radio and Timeout Magazine. Her works are included in numerous private collections and the public collections of Vera Institute of Justice, JP Morgan Chase, and Crystal Bridges Museum.
Artist Statement:
My current project examines how dominant culture, and artifacts shape our sense of identity and self. I make material interventions that alter or deconstruct an original subject to be manipulated and reconfigured in a way that has changed its meaning. This gesture, often ritualistic in nature seeks to understand our complex relationship to symbols, and the often-humorous solace they inspire. I view this process of altering as a means of gaining current and tactile access to the symbols that surround me. Materiality and the notion of the hand or labor, is important in my work. Cultural identity and the political reside in what is made. A gesture of solace, a covetous object, a thing made with spiritual devotion or a fervent patriotism are the things I find most seductive and inspiring.
Image above: Carla Edwards, Pixel, 2013, American flags, nylon dye, bleach, 50 x 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.