?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
XENOBIA BAILEY (1955 - ) Think (Study for MTA Hudson Yards).
Hand crocheted cotton and acrylic yarn with record collage on cotton canvas, 2008. Approximately 990x1524 mm; 39x60 inches. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist in Residency with Nick Cave, Atlantic Center for the Arts: May 10-30, 1998. Direction inspired for composition of crochet shapes into Cosmic Mandala's by the mentorship of Nick Cave" and "Large collection of multi-size, vibrant patterned, crochet, primary shapes 1996 - 1998" in ink, verso.
Provenance: collection of the artist, New York.
Exhibited: SITElines. 2016 much wider than a line, SITE Santa Fe, NM, July 2016 - January 2017.
Xenobia Bailey's Think. Study for MTA Hudson Yards is a maquette for her commission by the MTA Percent for Art of New York. It culminated in the construction of three monumental glass mosaic works entitled Funktional Vibrations at the 34th Street - Hudson Yards subway station. Composed of a series of concentric tondos, Bailey's study is inspired by what she calls "the Aesthetic of Funk." It is derived from the visual, performing, culinary, and literary arts of African American culture and the ability to create beauty from the discarded.
Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Bailey attended the University of Washington, studied Ethnomusicology, and attained a BFA in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Her textile art is inspired by her mother's handmade domestic needle arts and quilted creations, and her mother's collection of domestic textiles of local African American homemakers/caregivers in Seattle. This study and practice has developed into an aesthetic language fused with a range of cultural and experiential influences - including ancient African weaving techniques and the Kongo Cosmogram, a symbol important to Kongo metaphysics and spiritual ceremonies, Chinese, Native American, and Eastern philosophies, with undertones of 1970s Funk.
Bailey's most recent public art installations were at the New York City Art for Transit: #7 Subway Line Extension Station-34th St.-11th Ave., part of the Hudson Yard Development Project with three commissioned mosaic murals. Bailey's other permanent art installations are at Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library - Central Library, Washington, DC and the Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA. Her artworks are also in the collections of the Facebook Headquarters, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Allentown Textile Museum, the Newark Museum, the Sheldon Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design of New York, the Mott-Warsh Collection, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunisia, the US Embassy in Ghana and the US Embassy in Djibouti.
