ektor garcia, who received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2016, approaches sculpture and installation through experimentation with a wide range of craft techniques, from crochet and weaving to ceramics and metalwork. His works, which can evoke the human body as well as domestic items and natural or architectural forms, often recall family heirlooms or artifacts—objects with a significant past, present, and future.
“kortinas,” garcia’s current exhibition at Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo, highlights his fascination with the theatricality of curtains, and their dual function of hiding and revealing. In addition to crocheted works made from cotton rope, leather, suede, carbon steel, and waxed thread (anything but yarn), the show features new experiments with reflective fabric in addition to a selection of ceramic works.
Robert Preece: What got you interested in crocheting, and when did you and others start considering the pieces to be art?
ektor garcia: As a child, I was surrounded by my grandmother Josefina’s crochet. From the kitchen to the living room, to the bathroom, almost every surface of her house was covered in crochet doilies. I distinctly remember a Barbie doll with a crocheted dress hiding a spare toilet paper roll. Growing up, crocheting was ubiquitous to the point of near invisibility, yet everything served a purpose like protecting furniture or providing warmth.
Later, I encountered crochet and fiber art at SFMOMA—especially the work of Ruth Asawa, Olga de Amaral, Eva Hesse, Judith Scott, and Mike Kelley, among many others—and in San Francisco, I was close to a tight-knit group of queer punks (Heather Ciriza and Raúl de Nieves stand out) who shattered hierarchies between craft and art. At art school in Chicago, at SAIC’s Fiber Material Studies department, I started experimenting—crocheting, as I still do, with everything besides yarn. It was there that “Art” emerged. With crochet, you begin with a single line, make circular spiral knots, and then knot more knots into each knot, like fractals, which have the potential to grow and multiply endlessly. The infinity of possible patterns and techniques is like a spider web that I find myself caught in.
RP: You work with a range of materials, for example, leather, copper wire, suede, and metal threads. How do you crochet leather, as in kortina roja de cuero (2024) and kortina vermelha (2024)?
eg: I use the same hooks that you would use for yarn to crochet rope, metals, electrical cords, plastic, clay—you name it. You can also crochet with your fingers, hands, and entire arms. I rely on very special handmade wooden hooks for thicker stuff. In this regard, I was inspired when I saw Dave Cole’s Knitting Machine, which used two 20-foot knitting needles attached to two excavators to knit a flag. Breaking the rules is my jam. Why stick to the tried and true when you can fuck up and explore a myriad of possibilities?
RP: Your current show is titled “kortinas,” which means curtains. In addition to the forms, what other takes on curtains are you referring to?
eg: I travel quite often for work and end up staring at the windows of homes and businesses, and I appreciate the variety of curtains that you encounter around the world. The title came to me on a plane when I was closing a tiny plastic window curtain. Across cultures, handmade crochet curtains catch my eye, but they’re becoming all but obsolete with mass production. Curtains are permeable, flexible, and sometimes transparent or blackout; they shield things from the light and offer privacy and protection. In this exhibition, some act as architectural elements that guide your movement or frame moments. Using reflective fabric, I wanted to surprise viewers by playing with light.
RP: In kortina roja (2024), you use suede. How is crocheting that material different? What sorts of things do you think about while working?
eg: Crocheting suede is more difficult than crocheting leather cord, which is soft and smooth. Suede is sticky and challenging. It’s hard work, but I’m satisfied with the outcome. Making these pieces requires me to spend hundreds of hours alone in the studio in a meditative state. While in this headspace, I often think of the many other pieces of crochet I would rather be doing and will do after I finish with the one at hand. Work leads to more work. I focus on using my hands and arms to channel energy into the pieces so that they hold the history of their making. I release oils and sweat from my hands onto the various materials, which leave a trace—a patina of sorts. The travel, labor, and emotions involved in making these things, which I do solely on my own and in private, are recorded into the pieces. The text is in the textile if you just get close enough to read it.
RP: What are you referencing in ovo de crochê (2024)? Why a crocheted egg in bronze and cotton thread? Were you thinking of the egg in Italian Renaissance painting, an egg in nature, or one in your refrigerator?
eg: I’m obsessed with nature, and eggs feature widely in mysticism, alchemy, and art. This egg shape was an experiment. I crocheted cotton yarn, dipped it in molten wax, inflated a latex balloon inside to form the egg shape, and then had it cast in bronze using the lost wax process. I am fascinated by the material transformation of something soft and organic into a hard metal that will last a very long time and by the trickery involved in this process. It still looks like crochet, yet it is solid bronze. Placing it on a cotton-thread doily confuses everything. I want to make things that feel as though they could belong to the past, present, and future all at once.
RP: How do you crochet the reflective fabric in the hanging pieces and decide on the forms?
eg: For one piece, it was very hard to find material in the desired width. I had to hand-cut approximately 30 rolls of this material to a custom width in order to achieve the crocheted thickness I wanted. I treated it like any yarn, using metal hooks. Two pieces use a traditional granny square pattern with different edges; the amount of material I purchased dictated their final scale. The forms vary based on time, material, and the look I’m after. One has a lace-like pattern similar to a granny square—like a tile that can repeat endlessly. I knew I wanted rectangular forms reminiscent of curtains or doorways.
RP: In kortina bege (2024), you used crocheted linen, jute, and waxed thread. The work, with its distinct coloration, seems to have a different presence.
eg: It is very important to me to have variety, to never play it the same way twice. I try to seek the potential in diverse materials—in colors, textures, and thicknesses. With this piece, I wanted to explore the combination of three distinct materials—natural and synthetic, matte and shiny—and I am pleased with the result.
RP: What’s going on with kortinaz (2024), the reflective curtain-like pieces with bowtie-like tie backs?
eg: I am always finding the grotesque in the decorative quotidian. I like spotting stuff that rubs you the wrong way and tying it up with pretty bows. In parts of Mexico, when someone dies, the family within that home ties a black bow above the door to signify that they are in mourning, usually with whatever black fabric they have at hand. If it’s an infant, it’s a white bow. Sometimes, there are multiple bows, left for years, faded and weathered. The bows are, in their way, both functional and decorative. I find them so beautiful and inspiring.
RP: You also work in ceramic, and there are several ceramic pieces in this show, exhibited in the garden. Could you explain the two drum-like forms, columnas kortinaz (2024) and esfera telaraña (2024)?
eg: Ceramics are a very important part of my practice. I joke with my friends that working with clay counteracts the strain that crocheting puts on my wrists. Clay is wet, cool, and malleable until it dries and is fired; then, it becomes hard as a rock. I wanted ceramics in this show to contrast with the kortinaz, grounding the work and nodding to my love of the Earth. I made the two drum-like forms in the first week after arriving in São Paulo, without any sketching or formal planning, by using a coil-building technique, working in a spiral circular motion. The kiln size set their height limits. Once they were dry, I carved curtain-like patterns on them and painted them with copper oxide—a nod to the copper I often use in my work—and red iron oxide. Red iron is so rich in the soil here that I couldn’t ignore it. esfera telaraña is a double spider web orb—a form I’ve played with in the past, a reference to the spider goddess who weaves her home and traps her food in her web.
“kortinas” is on view at Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo through February 1, 2025.
