Elevate at 21c: Marina Peng

Elevate at 21c showcases the work of artists in St. Louis and the central Mississippi River region, highlighting the range and depth of visual culture in this dynamic, ever-changing area. 

Throughout this exhibition Moraa N. Nyaribo, Marina Peng, Hannah Sanders, and Blake Sanders express how intergenerational memory and knowledge create foundations for their paths through the world. Parts of these foundations are strong but stand apart from the contemporary world, which often focuses only on the present; other parts may be faded or lost. Using traditional, craft-based techniques of weaving, braiding, crocheting, and embroidery with contemporary materials and forms, each artist uses time and labor to celebrate and also break with the past. Tactile threads woven by hands create patterns and materials anew, but familiar over generations.  

The artists articulate their presence in this specific moment and place, establishing a dialogue that links past traditions with future generations. Peng examines her position as a second-generation American in the Midwest. She says “I explore the humor, pain, and irony within this position by depicting the vicious cycles that exist within my family, dual cultures, and myself.” The woven triptych waxing, waning, wanting shows disembodied hands braiding hair, an image Peng connects to girlhood.

Outward appearance, either of hair or dress, is referenced in each of the artworks. Nyaribo and Peng both explore the politics and intimacy of hair. For Peng, the hair is first untangled, then parted, and finally braided in each section of the triptych, waxing, waning, wanting, both a social and intimate act of preparation. This ritual, repeated hundreds of time, is a gesture passed through generations of connected muscle memory.

Each artist references what is hidden in comparison to what is shown. Peng sites her triptych in the windows, emphasizing what is inside and what is expressed on the outside. The “curtains” both reveal and hide the windows, framing the outside view, mirroring the way that hair may hide or reveal one’s eyes – the windows to the soul.

Marina Peng
Marina Peng’s site-specific textile work is installed in three window alcoves, intentionally utilizing an untraditional space for artwork display. waxing, waning, wanting consists of three hand-woven panels depicting a curtain of dark hair being untangled (left panel), parted (middle panel), and braided (right panel). Each panel shows a pair of hands manipulating the “hair” whose owner is unknown. With this triptych, the artist explores the experience of feeling simultaneously connected and disconnected to girlhood. The artwork plays with weaving techniques by both breaking the traditional rectilinear bounds of the loom as well as using sections of unwoven warp to mimic the texture of hair.