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VOID_STRATA is a collaborative quilt series by Tina Benavente and Artist X, merging textile mastery and conceptual inquiry into a unified expression of cultural memory, technological residue, and Indigenous futurism. Drawing on Benavente’s deep-rooted practice in quilting, chromatic design, and material storytelling, and Artist X’s exploration of media histories and speculative identity, the series transforms reimagined television test patterns into richly layered visual tapestries.
Referencing the mid-20th century “Indian-head” test pattern—a broadcast calibration image that depicted a stereotyped Native figure—VOID_STRATA subverts this icon of technological misappropriation. What was once a tool for standardizing image becomes, through this collaboration, a site for unraveling inherited narratives and reconfiguring the broadcast field as a space of resistance and resurgence.
Each quilt captures the movement of sine waves and the ghost of analog static through intricate stitchwork and nuanced color shifts. These motifs, interpreted through Benavente’s textile techniques, bring tactile depth to X’s conceptual framework, creating a multidimensional tableau that explores the thresholds of authorship, identity, and perception. Together, they ask: Does voice require identity? Can presence emerge through absence? What is transmitted when nothing appears to be broadcasting?
VOID_STRATA honors matrilineal traditions of making and gifting, while simultaneously offering a future-facing critique of representation and erasure. This collaboration is an embodiment of cultural reclamation through aesthetic resistance—each work a signal woven into cloth.
The VOID_STRATA quilt series is currently available for acquisition through Gerald Peters Contemporary.
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