Eva Gabriella Flynn
Volver
August to October 2024 @ Pennant Place
928 NW 21st Ave, Gainesville, Florida
Public Reception: September 8, 5-7pm
Curated by Flounder Lee
Artist Statement
My earliest memory is at the border. In it, agents ask where I’m from; who I’m related to; where am I going; do I pledge allegiance to the flag; and where is my home? I am four and confused because home is here but also there.
Today, my work lives in this liminal space between the US-Mexico border. Volver consists of five flags made with found fabrics and natural dyes sourced from the Chihuahuan Desert. This project was born out of a fantasy narrative that re-imagined the Borderlands into a landscape without colonial, imperialist borders. Flags are signifiers of identity and territory, but these do not align with the physical borders that stand today. Each flag is sewn with a collection of found fabrics and dyed with natural pigments foraged in the Chihuahuan Desert that cover much of the American Southwest and Mexico’s Northern states. The muted earth tones of the flags are the result of the onion scraps from my mother’s kitchen, juniper bark from the Organ Mountains, cochineal from the nopales in my backyard, and blooming creosote from the monsoon season. Volver is an amalgamation of the colors, scents, and organic material that make up the Chihuahuan Desert and signal a home that recognizes no borders. –Eva
Curatorial Statement
The human and non-human inhabitants of the Chihuahuan desert predate the US-Mexico border. Ancestors of the humans living there predate the border, predate colonialism as a whole in many cases. Some are colonizers, some are colonized, and many are some combination. The non-human beings enjoyed free movement since time immemorial, but walls, borders, and other human interventions have disrupted this natural landscape. Human communities have also been divided by this imaginary line. The movement of people has been restricted, but ebbs and flows with border policies, which change with administrations and laws and often feel as arbitrary and capricious as an imaginary line on a map.
For Volver, Eva Gabriella Flynn creates flags with found fabrics and natural dyes that are procured from home and the desert. These flags reference the land, the sky, and the human and non-human inhabitants of the border region. They don’t represent nations or states but ideals, ideas, and emotions. They are both more nebulous and more concrete than country flags. They are poetic and grounded. They represent a past and a future where the land and its inhabitants take center stage over politics and imaginary lines meant to divide.
Artist Biography
Eva Gabriella Flynn is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist whose work intertwines personal and historical narratives of the US/Mexico border. Her imagery is inspired by both the psychological and physical landscapes that shape the borderland region she calls home. Eva Gabriella is from Las Cruces, NM where she attended New Mexico State University and received a BFA in Studio Arts and a BA in Foreign Languages. She earned her MFA in Studio Arts with a concentration in painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. Most recently, Eva Gabriella was a recipient of the Chihuahuan Desert Cultural Fellowship, 2022 Emerging Artist of New Mexico grant and award, and a Meghan Furgueson Mraz award recipient through the Harwood Art Center, and a Spring Artist in Residence at the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument. She has exhibited nationally with exhibitions at the Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; and Field Projects, NY.
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Upcoming Exhibitions
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