Alyssa Phoebus Mumtaz 2015-2016 New City Artist in Residence Photo by Maegan Moore
Beginning with a BA from Yale University in 2004, followed by an MFA from Columbia University in 2008, Alyssa Phoebus Mumtaz has sought process and practice while working with fibers and textiles, especially silks. Mumtaz’s extensive experience through residencies spanning a thirteen year period has had her traversing the globe from the east to west coast of the United States, to Spain, to Ireland and India. She currently teaches art at the University of Virginia. Of her travel and practice around the world, Mumtaz says, “The experiential part for me is sitting in the workshop with the weavers, seeing them in action, talking to their families, ruminating on what I learn there, and also coming back home to find other parallels that relate to it. This unfolds over time. I have that contact with artisans practicing ancient techniques, and the more I learn and connect the dots, even after the experience, the more it will continue to live in my practice.”
On residencies: “On a basic level, having these residency opportunities are encouragement that makes you feel like, okay, I’m on the right track because there are people who are helping me to produce my work and who are giving me opportunities to travel. The travel has been very valuable to my practice. More importantly, and more qualitatively, every single one of these opportunities has left me with some kind of materials that I can take with me after the experience. So, for instance when I did the fellowship residency in New York at Dieu Donné, I had the opportunity to make hand made paper on a very large scale, and I had the assistance and guidance of a master papermaker. After that experience I knew a lot more about paper and had a deeper understanding of what you could do with paper and more of an appreciation for it.” On research: “I don’t really consider my research to be academic in nature, but I do think an artist should know about the materials they use, especially when they use materials that come from a particular practice or culture, or even a specific history like the history of papermaking or the history of letterpress printmaking. It’s important to immerse yourself in it and know what is implied by colors and symbols, to know the technique’s prehistory. This has manifested recently for me in my research in hand-woven silk. I was always attracted to hand woven silk, but then I started thinking about it seriously, about where it comes from and how it’s made. This dove-tailed with other interests I have of India. So the last residency trip was really about trying to learn more about that craft, but also to try to meet weavers who make it and to get a sense of what their life is like and what their practice is today and so on. Research always leads you in directions that are unanticipated.” On color: “When I do use color, it’s always very intentional. The piece still has an austerity to it, but I’m starting to branch out into thinking about color a bit more visibly, and a lot of my color combinations, like turqoiuse and pink or saffron yellow and indego blue, come from things that I have learned about traditional art. I love indigo, but I also love natural silks that haven’t been dyed, just the natural fiber expressing itself. In my recent work, you see a lot of indigo and a blonde linen beige color. The saffron and indigo is a combination you see in Indian painting that’s symbolic of Radha and Krishna, Krishna being an important Hindu god and Radha being his consort. They’re very potent in that respect; they’re also very rich, natural colors. The indigo for me is really the most significant in that it’s almost black, but it still has a hue, kind of a rich blue like the night’s sky. It’s a color that occurs in a lot of sacred traditions, both in textiles, but also in book arts. The combination of gold and blue is also something I’m very attracted to, because it appears in so many traditional contexts from paintings of the Virgin Mary in her blue robes, to the blue Koran, to Buddhist manuscripts. That extremely rich combination with blue and gold is one that people have always responded to, so I see my work in a quiet way as being in dialogue with a tradition of using those colors and pigments.” On New City Arts: “New City has been a wonderful experience, and I’m so grateful that they were willing to try this out with me. I’m the first artist in this new residency. They’ve had past residency programs that have been very successful, but this was a new kind of initiative. When they opened the Welcome Gallery, which is their first truly dedicated and independent gallery space here in Charlottesville, they decided to try the artists residency here as a shared space. While working here, I continued a project I’m working on called Travelers, which involves paper collage cutouts that are mounted onto the silk. When I first got here, I finished one I’d been working on as I traveled through different countries. It’s the largest one I’ve ever made, twice the size of the others. It went in a slightly more abstract direction, but because it’s large in scale it has a different physical presence. Having the large studio space at New City has allowed me to explore that and to make something that’s a little more monumental, while still working with a textile/tapestry. New City has allowed me to make connections in the community, as well. I have been here in Charlottesville for about three years, but I hadn’t met many people in the community because my life had been focused more on the university (UVA) where I teach, but now I feel like I know a lot more people and I’ve had some really interesting conversations and met some really wonderful people in the arts community here in Charlottesville.”
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FLAR / Spring 2016 / Volume 4, Issue 1