The strength and fragility of nature portrayed by Joanne Aono.
COMING UP SOON!!
Joanne Aono and Sofía Fernández Díaz
Threads and Granules
Located in LEWIS HALL
January 15–February 15, 2025
Reception: Wednesday, January 15, 4:00-6:00 p.m. Artist Talk at 4:30 p.m.
No easy beauty characterizes the work of Joanne Aono and Sofia Fernandez-Diaz. Grounded in immersive research, both artists de-materialize the familiar, and embrace challenging paths in work and life that recognize the complexities in their twining. They callback to ancestral practices that revel in excavation, renewal and transformation. This feeds a practice that is not just a pursuit of formal beauty but one that engages holistically in unison with nature and daily ritual, growing studio habits with rigor, and broader ideas about lived experience.
Joanne Aono is a visual artist and curator; she lives, works, and maintains a holistic farm in north central Illinois. Her research-based drawings and installations address identity, immigration, and the environment. Her Japanese American identities and experience as a twin sister find their way into the form and content of her work.
Dualities of homeland inform Sofia Fernandez Diaz’s practice as well, as she exchanges ideas and documents culturally specific processes with artisans from her birthplace in Mexico City. Profound attention to the smallest detail is evidenced in her tiny, vigorous sculptures. They look delicate but tough…assertive in their gestures. Some feel seed-like in their coiled potential. Aono has worked with literal seeds as a medium that collaborates with the ecosystem, yielding artistic control. This reminds us of the power inherent in small things and surrendering to uncertainty and the vicissitudes of nature. Echoed in the words of poet Gretel Ehrlich: “I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.”
‘Threads and Granules’ may call to mind the warp and weft of a textile, and the minuscule (grain-like) elements that can comprise a textured surface. It is also the literal breakdown of the word mitochondria- the powerhouse of the cell, passed down through the matrilineal line. Mito (thread) and Chondris (granule) describe the nature of this dual morphology of the structures as they appear microscopically. Both Aono and Fernandez Diaz trust the process of discovery and harness the power of slow looking by pulling you closer through modalities like intimate scale, translucency and repetitive labor. This work inspires delight in the moment, but also curiosity about what is and what could be.
About the Artists
Joanne Aono is a visual artist, curator, and holistic farmer. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions including Boundary (Chicago, IL), Illinois State Museum (Chicago, Springfield, and Lockport), and Governors State University (University Park, IL). Upcoming exhibitions include Yale Institute of Sacred Music (New Haven, CT), The Plan (Chicago, IL), and UIS Visual Arts Gallery (Springfield, IL). She has received multiple grants, and her art has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, Chicago Reader, and Chicago Magazine. Aono directs the alternative art project, Cultivator- Chicago Art Exhibitions & Farm Art Projects, and serves on the exhibition committee of the Riverside Arts Center. She maintains a studio at Bray Grove Farm in north central Illinois.
Sofía Fernández Díaz came to Chicago after receiving the Joan Livingston scholarship to earn her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies at SAIC. After graduating, she was selected to receive a Spark grant by Chicago Artist Coalition and invited to hold a 2023 Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center. She previously earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a degree in Art Anthropology from CIESAS in Mexico City. In addition to being exhibited, published, and collected both nationally and internationally, Sofía has spent more than a decade exchanging ideas with artisans across Mexico, sharing her documentation and intimate knowledge of their processes and daily rituals through workshops on natural pigments and dyeing.