Johana Moscoso: 2014-2024 A Decade of Passion

Virtual Exhibition
August 2, 2024 – September 27, 2024

Online Artist Talk
Thursday, August 23 at 11:00 a.m. Central/12:00 p.m. Eastern

By Krishna Adams, Director of Visual Arts, Craft, Media, and Design –

Our current exhibit features the multidisciplinary artist, Johana Moscoso. With roots in Bogotá, Colombia, and a current home in Memphis, she offers a unique artistic perspective, weaving together narratives of South and North American experiences. This retrospective encompasses the most recent decade showcasing multiple series of Moscoso’s work incorporating textiles and embroidery, as well as ceramics and video to share stories, find connections, and celebrate life, using dance and visual art to express her vision. See the exhibition here.

Her fiber work uses hand and machine stitching and embroidering techniques to create abstract maps that trace the time, labor, and nostalgia of her family’s migratory journeys. In Moscoso’s Abstracts Maps and Languages series, she finds connections between her homeland in Colombia and the places where her family has migrated, the languages related to these locations, and the memories that have passed from generations.

The titles, Neh-moh-KON, Boh-goh-TA- ee- Meh-deh-JEEN, reflects its Spanish pronunciation to aid English speakers. The embroidered lips correspond to the movement of the mouth saying the word family in Spanish, “Familia”. Each set of lips in the embroidery represents one syllable or vowel sound of that word. Moscoso explains that “The two sets of lips near the center correspond to the latitude and longitude of Nemocón. The lips on the bottom correspond to the latitude and longitude of Bogotá, the lips on the top left correspond to the latitude and longitude of Medellín. These sets of lips map the men of my family’s migration from Nemocón to Bogotá and to Medellín…The lines in the fabric act as a trace for the distance and time of their journeys.”

In addition to textile and embroidered art, Moscoso uses her passion of dance to create performance works inspired by fragile human states and expressed through movement. These performances reflect traditional Latine dance and culture. In Machera Floors, she captures the movement of music through a physical recording made by the heels of dancing shoes pressing into porcelain clay. Click here to see a video of the creation of Machera Floors.

The Ingrid Lopez Project series pays homage to her father’s cousin, Ingrid Lopez who unexpectedly passed away in 2016. Inspired by memories and testimonials, Moscoso collected clothing and shoes that belonged to Lopez, later incorporating those items into a body of work to celebrate the life of Lopez. As seen in the diptych, Dos vestidos de Ingrid/Two Ingrid’s Dresses, Moscoso uses pieces of Lopez’s dress that are embroidered onto black canvas using embroidery floss and crochet thread. The exhibition also includes installation images that show cast porcelain replicas of Lopez’s shoes. Find out more about the Ingrid Lopez Project here.

In Moscoso’s Entre cattleya trianae y Passiflora incarnata, she laboriously combined techniques such as screenprint, foil transfer, and machine and hand-stitched multi-colored layers of laser-cut fabric together, layering over each other using the traditional Mola technique. The Mola process is a reverse appliqué method that originated by the Kunas Indigenous Latin American communities in which layers of different colored cloth are nearly invisibly sewn together and then worked on or cut away to reveal a multi-dimensional design. Mola-designed material is often worn on a shirt but may also be used in numerous contemporary ways, including quilt designs or part of wall artwork.

Moscoso is currently exploring embroidery with floral and animal motifs as seen in La historia calada de estela, la flor y el cactus as part of the Historias de flora y fauna series. Moscoso earned her B.F.A. from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia and received an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, GA.

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at SCAD Museum of Art and Design in Savannah, GA; Lakeside Legacy Arts Park in Crystal Lake, IL; A.C.A. Gallery in Atlanta, GA; OxBow School of Arts and Artists’ Residency in Saugatuck, MI; Au Bon Pain, Cambridge in Boston, MA; and in Chicago, IL at the Chicago Artist Coalition, the Trailer Park Project, and Center for Green Technology. Her work was also in SILOS, an exhibition curated by Dr. Jeffreen M. Hayes, that traveled throughout the U.S.A. In Tennessee, Moscoso’s work has been shown at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Art Gallery at Southwest Tennessee Community College, and Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, all in Memphis. Last year, Moscoso was a recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship in Craft from the Tennessee Arts Commission. This award recognizes and acknowledges outstanding professional artists living and working in Tennessee who, through their work, add to the state’s cultural vitality.

Moscoso has presented solo exhibitions in Bogotá, Colombia, at Colegio Nueva Granada, Galería imánarte espacio abierto, and ArtBox Gallery. Their work has also been showcased in Japan and Serbia. As a professional artist, Moscoso has delivered artist talks, conducted numerous workshops as a visiting artist, and participated in various residencies.