New Harmony Gallery Hosts Exhibition, PAÑUELXS

The New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art’s (NHGCA) newest exhibition, PAÑUELXS, will open Saturday, January 22 and run through Saturday, March 5. PAÑUELXS, featuring works by Chicago-based artist Vanessa Viruet, includes textile works and sculpture in the main gallery exhibition space and features a temporary public art piece in New Harmony’s Maclure Square, across the street from the gallery.

A closing reception will be held at the NHGCA from 4-6 p.m. Saturday, March 5. Masks are required in all University buildings in accordance with USI’s COVID-19 policy.

Viruet utilizes materials like bandanas, hoop earrings, cars and found objects to investigate gender roles, cultural identity and socioeconomic experiences. In PAÑUELXS, large-scale installations, printed fabric, shiny objects and repetitive patterns using bold shapes and colors serve as symbols or “flags” to share communal and personal stories.

PAÑUELXS (a play on the Spanish word for “hanky”) explores the various ways in which we present ourselves. Utilizing the gallery’s exhibition space as the hyper-feminine “interior space” and an outdoor site-specific installation as a hyper-masculine “public space,” Viruet flamboyantly displays expressions of identity. While creating a shared space that speaks to community experience, PAÑUELXS is also a space to celebrate Viruet’s own experience as Queer, Latina and a first-generation college graduate.

Viruet is a fiber artist of Puerto Rican descent. She creates monumental scale artworks to examine the complex histories rooted in textiles such as identity, cultural heritage, gender and class. Viruet holds a BFA and a MA in teaching from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She currently serves as an art instructor for Chicago Public Schools and teaches in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

NHCGA is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The gallery promotes discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the state of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.

NHCGA is a proud outreach partner of the University of Southern Indiana.