Kira Dominguez Hultgren
Assistant Professor
Contact
Bio
Kira Dominguez Hultgren (b. 1980, she/they) is a U.S.-based artist, weaver, and educator. They studied postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University, and studio arts and visual and critical studies at California College of the Arts. Their research interests include material and embodied rhetorics, re-storying material culture, and weaving as a performative critique of the visual. Dominguez Hultgren weaves with the material afterlife of a so-called multiracial family: Chicanx-Indigenous-Indian-Hollywood Hawaiian-Brown-Black. Instead of being passed down, weaving and textile processes are brought up, resurrected from family stories and fabrics. Questions about cultural appropriation and codeswitching, exoticism, and performing cultural misrecognitions occupy their practice.
Dominguez Hultgren’s work has received critical attention in the New York Times, Architectural Digest, New York Times Style Magazine, and Fiber Art Now. Their residencies and fellowships include the Basque BioDesign Center in Bilbao, Spain, Gensler, Facebook, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Dominguez Hultgren’s work is in the de Young Museum of Fine Art’s permanent collection. They are represented in San Francisco by Eleanor Harwood Gallery.
Awards: 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, 2024 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship, 2024 Center for Craft Research Fund Fellowship, 2023 Burke Prize Finalist. Exhibitions: Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textile, California; the Roswell Museum, New Mexico; Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Alabama; Eleanor Harwood Gallery, California. Public Installations: City of Berkeley, California; City of Schenectady, New York; City of Phoenix, Arizona
Portfolio
Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Arose, 2019, virgin and less pure wool in homespun marigold and primitive rust; mixed yarn blends from the U.S., U.K., and Canada; Indian cotton; Chinese silk; climbing gym rope from Berkeley Ironworks; found wooden frame bars and stakes; cam straps and d-rings, 132" x 132" x 26" (dimensions variable)
Kira Dominguez Hultgren, In the Silence Between Mother Tongues, 2022, silk salwar and chunni; climbing gym rope; paracord; found wood, plastic, and metal loom bars, heddle rods, and shed rods; eye bolts; handspun and hand dyed wool; digital-hand woven fabric in cotton, mohair, and metallics; miscellaneous yarns and fabrics, 92” x 55”x 12”
Kira Dominguez Hultgren, To Carry Every Name but Your Own, 2022, handspun ropes in sisal, silk, bullet-proof and stab-proof Kevlar; warped in wool, acrylic, cotton, linen, silk; loom bars; zip ties, 92” x 59”x 38” (dimensions variable)
Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Split from Center, 2022, Handspun brown: skins, fleeces, straps, fabrics, yarns, silks, loom bars, zip ties, sticks, and other hardware, 162" x 135" x 26" (dimensions variable)