Open Call: Avram Finkelstein

Untitled, 1971 is a jacquard woven tapestry that enlarges a section of an iPhone photo of a 1971 portrait of a close, gender nonconforming friend of Finkelstein. Jacquard weaving is a textile technique that was common to the 19th century and that uses a punch card system related to early computer technologies. Untitled, 1971 transposes the computer image of the iPhone photo into this weaving technique to evoke the Ben-Day dot pattern, a 19th-century technique for photo reproduction. Finkelstein’s woven tapestry questions social visibility in its presentation of a small detail on a monumental scale and explores the conflict between public and private life in the tsunami of digital images that attest to our gendered identities in the contemporary world.