(for the bisexual dykes who lost all their lesbian friends after they fucked a guy), still from the tv show The Bisexual, 2019. Hand-embroidered sequins, imitation silk, thread, and interfacing. 36" x 18."
DANI LOPEZ uses textile processes to "reimagine her closeted queer youth into an out loud one." Informed by autobiography and pop culture, her weavings, soft sculptures and sequined banners balance narrative and abstraction in an exploration of queer and femme identity. dani earned her BFA in Drawing and Painting at the University of Oregon in Eugene and her MFA in Textiles at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In January 2020, dani’s solo show dykes on the dancefloor was on view at Root Division in San Francisco. Her work was recently included in Typos + Spills + Broken Glass at Amos Eno Gallery (Brooklyn) and the 33rd Annual Materials: Hard + Soft International Contemporary Craft Exhibition (Denton, TX), and her work will be included in a show titled Notes on Erasure at CTRL+SHFT (Oakland) in August (hopefully). dani lives and works in Oakland, CA.
OtherPeoplesPixels: Tell us about the relationship between abstraction and narrative in your work.
dani lopez: The oscillation between abstraction and narrative has been present in my practice for over 10 years. When I feel like I rely on narrative too heavily, I shift to abstraction to make things more oblique and harder to read. And when the abstract work is being read in ways that aren’t specific enough for me, I move back to the narrative work. In the past, I worried that I’d have to choose one side over the other in hopes of a coherent practice. It’s only until recently that I have become more comfortable with this back and forth. When I look at my entire body of work, I see that the abstract and narrative work need each other for balance, and they inform each other as the work grows. The constants that connect the two are the role of my hand, the way that color factors in and materiality.
tell me that love isn’t true, 2019. Handwoven cotton yarn and novelty hand cut fabrics. 36" x 108."
OPP: What materials are you most attracted to?
dl: My materials are purchased at Joann’s Fabrics, Michaels and local fabric outlet stores. In the past, this was a financial necessity for me. As time went on, I realized that my high school drop-out/working-class background, the necessity for these “cheap” materials, and the dialogue I was having with queer art history and culture were a stable ground for me to work upon. Looking back to the 90s DIY culture—I was a teenager in the mid/late 90s—and to the queer aesthetics that I was so attracted to, the material choices became easier and easier for me to make. It was also an act of refusal to more sophisticated, clean, minimal materials/aesthetic choices that I can’t separate from the cishet male painter canon (I was a painter in undergrad).
The work evokes a campy, sad aesthetic in the way that we often find ourselves calling a friend after a break-up/rejection and as we’re crying, we—or at least me—make jokes at our own expense for levity. That space between heartbreak and humor, in attempts to alleviate the pain, if even for a moment, is where a lot of my narrative springs from.
Fuck…, 2018. Machine sewn and hand embroidered cotton. 22" x 17."
OPP: What does the recurring form of the bow mean to you?
dl: Initially, I was attracted to its connotations of decoration, frivolousness and hyper-femininity. As that body of work grew, my interest in narrative and the posture that these objects were holding became more and more developed. Each bow came to embody a personality, a feeling, or an archetype. With the work maybe the feeling just comes and it goes, I realized the bows could symbolize something I was going through at the time (coming together and coming undone, over and over). These static objects were also activated by the act of tying them up and pulling apart, hinting at time.
baby femme, 2017. Handwoven fabric; cotton dyed with commercial dye, acrylic yarn, wire, and sequin fabric. 34" x 29."
OPP: dykes on the dancefloor is a series of hand-embellished, silk banners. Each one is dedicated to dykes that share a common experience (for example, ACT-UP dykes who cared for their gay brothers while they were dying of AIDS and trans dykes who were able to feel free and fall in love). Are the TV shows and movies referenced in the titles the impetus for the work?
dl: This body of work began with me watching the French movie, BPM. There’s a beautiful dance sequence throughout the movie and it made me think about the moments on the dance floor when someone is partially illuminated. For the first work, ACT-UP dykes who cared for their gay brothers while they were dying of AIDS, I chose a still from BPM that features a lesbian on the dance floor. I had these stills printed on fabric (imitation silk and now velvet) and began embroidering sequins over the illuminated areas. I think of them as reinterpretations and interventions of queer culture and history. They also contribute and participate in the culture and history as well. The titles refer to what is happening at that moment, but they are my titles (with the reference to the still after the title).
(for the dykes who only came out to themselves and in their fantasies), still from Black Mirror’s San Junipero episode, 2019. Hand-embroidered sequins, imitation silk, thread, and interfacing. 36" x 18."
OPP: Sequins can serve the contradictory purposes of hiding and highlighting the surface of fabric. This seems conceptually important in this series.
dl: This is another example of my balancing act of representation and abstraction. In some of the stills, you can see a figure, but I make sure to obscure it. Other times I purposely choose stills that are confusing or look like flashes of light, but there is always a figure in each work. To me, seeing queer womxn on the dancefloor losing themselves in the moment, dancing with their girlfriend, or trying to make their ex jealous are really beautiful and intimate moments that I wanted to capture. I’m also protective of these moments, I want queer womxn to be visible and for them to feel seen, but I don’t want these to be easily consumed images. The viewer needs to do a little work with these works, just in the way that I needed to really work to find these images to work with. Finding images of queer womxn on the dancefloor was challenging and that frustration is definitely a part of this body of work.
(for the trans dykes who never felt safe enough to come out), still from tv show Euphoria, 2019. Hand-embroidered sequins, imitation silk, thread, and interfacing. 36" x 18."
OPP: It’s been more than a month since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. How are you coping? How is your studio practice being affected?
dl: This answer varies from day to day. My studio practice has been dramatically affected, partially because I’m no longer going to my studio—it’s in San Francisco and I’m in Oakland. I’ve also lost access to a loom I work on in a different space. But my headspace has also been affected as well. Some days it feels so good to work on embroidery or to work on writing for future performance work. Other days everything feels pointless and I just call friends, watch tv, eat cookies, or zone out.
I’m employed (for now) and that feels like enough on any given day. The one constant is that I’m still reading, which is the foundation of everything for me. I’m working out more, doing yoga more, and meditating twice a day to manage the anxiety and depression. These are the things that feel doable and also really good because so many things don’t feel good right now. I daydream about having a huge house party at my place (I’ve got a great roof for it) with all my friends and hugging each and every one of them, once all of this is over.
To see more of Dani's work, please visit www.danilopez.us.