Women Textile Artists in Miami are having their moment.

Celebrating Care, Community and Heritage through fiber-based art

Regina Jestrow, Pieced Landscape 50 (after Olga De Amaral) hand-dyed cotton (reactive dyes), gifted upholstery fabric, other synthetic fabric, felt, thread

Textiles have been used as a means of communication for centuries; the word “text” comes from the Latin textus, meaning “woven.” Covering us from birth to death, textiles have conveyed symbolic, political, and spiritual messages across cultures from the Incan empire to Gee Bends quilters. As evident in the multi dimensional work of Miami’s Fiber-based women artists, textiles intrinsically convey both ideas of care and nurturing, as well as resistance and critical inquiry.

The growing institutional and art market embrace of textiles today is not without historical precedent, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, fiber art emerged as a radical movement across Europe and the United States, developing in parallel with the struggles for women’s liberation, civil rights, and peace. Artists activists like Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago pushed the medium forward, created spaces for other women to show their work and broke new ground. They paved the way for the recent popularity of textile art, which is having a long-overdue moment. Recently, 93-year-old Colombian fiber artist Olga de Amaral broke auction records. And her critically acclaimed exhibitions at ICA Miami and the Cartier Foundation in Paris were 2025 blockbusters.

Olga de Amaral at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, May 1 - October 12, 2025. © Olga de Amaral. (Photo: © 2025 Kris Tamburello.) Amaral’s work aludes to the religious and ceremonial dimensions of gold which in the Ancient Americas was a material connected to the sun and the earth. Likewise she draws attention to its plunder and extraction both in the colonial era and today.

Textiles made by women complicate the rigid, colonial division between “fine art” and “craft.” They refuse to be quiet in the traditionally male-dominated space of art history, where textiles have been gendered as women’s work and deemed less serious. One of its pioneers, Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann in 1899), began working in fiber arts because the progressive Bauhaus art school in Germany that she attended, while theoretically egalitarian, directed all its female students to the weaving workshop, while men could choose from sculpture, furniture design, or metalwork. In 1933 Anni and her husband Josef Albers arrived in New York as refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and the Bauhaus, which the Gestapo had shuttered earlier that spring. Prior to the move, Anni met a young American architect named Philip Johnson in Berlin. After their inital visa applications were turned down, Johnson secured the Alpers teaching positions at Black Mountain College in North Carolina where they spent 16 years. There Alpers became a feminist icon of weaving and design in the US. In 1949 the Museum of Modern Art exhibition of her work was the first dedicated to a fiber artist. In 1990, at 91 years young she received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. This odd trend of “discovering” (so colonial) women artists in their 90’s is evident in Olga Amaral’s aforementioned recent market and institutional success.

Anni Albers in her studio at Black Mountain College, 1937© 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

While textile artists are reaching institutional recognition, sadly, the bias against women and textiles in Western Art History persists, as evident in a May 12, 2025, New York Times piece describing Amaral’s record-breaking foray into the auction world.

A tapestry by the 93-year-old Colombian artist Olga de Amaral marks her first appearance in a major New York evening auction — the latest symbol that yet another under-known female artist has moved from the fringes of the marketplace to its upper echelon. “She’s really a rediscovery, and finally coming out of the pigeonhole,” said Jean-Paul Engelen, a Phillips executive.

“She’s no longer a craft artist or a Latin artist. She’s just an artist.”

The language used by this tone-deaf, male auction house executive is not only sexist, but it replicates the outdated dichotomy between craft and art. Anthropologist Sandra Niessen argues that this binary, oppositional thinking, one pitting art vs. craft, traditional versus modern, or Western versus non-Western, is a way to uphold the boundary between “the West and the rest” and to protect the Global North’s position of power, while perpetuating a conceptual “Other.”

“Let’s face it. The West is NOT superior. It is the Big Bad Wolf. The West is the undisputed leader in destroying our beautiful-but-abused Planet Earth." - Sandra Niessen

Rather than perpetuating that divisive binary, Miami’s textile artists reclaim craft as a vehicle for community-building. Many turn to textiles to make political statements and sound the alarm on the climate crisis, working (in the words of Aurora Molina) with thread not as decoration but as a form of resistance, a consequence of women stepping out of the embroidery circle and into the public arena.

This intersection of art, fiber, and community radiates with a multi-cultural, tropical energy characteristic of Miami. Women textile artists have a commanding presence here, their work woven into the fabric of daily life, visible in local schools, libraries, airports, luxury hotels, and private collections, and anchored by all-female collectives like FAMA (Fiber Arts Association of Miami).

The sense of community is echoed in the words of artist Jen Clay: “Miami has shaped my work by giving me a strong sense of community and belonging. It’s where I found my people; artists who genuinely support and encourage experimentation. That support has made it possible for me to push further into creating immersive, sensory-inclusive environments.”

Jen Clay photographed by Zachary Balber from the series “ Wild Dogs” that will be shown at Nada NYC with Baker Hall, “the work is inspired by the strays, coyotes and dogs that frequented the artist’s childhood home,” in North Carolina. The materials include her grandmother’s vintage spring-themed bedsheets.

According to Clay, “quilting allows me to play and soothe my anxieties about the future, creating doomsday monsters with hidden messages that visitors can touch and discover.” According to the press release for her latest work, Clay’s grandmother was a constant source of inspiration.

Much like the aforementioned Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s that pushed back against a male-dominated modernist art canon by elevating so-called "feminine" crafts such as quilting, embroidery, and textiles, there is also a profound thread of ancestral connection running through contemporary fiber-based work, particularly to the figure of the grandmother. This resonance is felt deeply in the practice of Venezuelan-born artist and fashion designer Lisu Vega.

“My artistic journey is deeply rooted in the intricate tapestry of human memory, expressed through weaving. My extensive photographic archive serves as a reservoir of portraits, experiences, and memories that inspire and inform my work. As I navigate the realms of both physical and digital media, I am able to create a symbiotic relationship between past and present. Most importantly, I honor my grandmothers and the women who came before them; their DNA is woven into each of my pieces.” - Lisu Vega

This link to the maternal hits home for me as a fellow Latinx immigrant who also learned what “sustainable” truly means by watching my own grandmother make and mend her clothing with a costurera and never waste a single item of food, in fact she held on to a relic of a fridge for over 50 years, refusing to buy a new one. Vega’s work is a testament to the fading of our past and the need to deep dive into our own archives and ancestral wisdom.

The work of artist Kelly Tapia-Chuning (b. 1997, California) further echoes the link to ancestral memory and heritage. A recent transplant to Miami, Chuning is a mixed Chicana artist of indigenous heritage who works primarily with textiles and research to explore themes of cultural hybridity, colonial rupture and the legacies of assimilation. Her practice centers on the serape, the iconic Mexican blankets which she takes apart and reassembles as a way to address the inherited trauma of centuries of assimilation, and to recover lost connections to her family history and identity.

“Being that I’m from the Southwestern U.S. and my ancestral ties are in the desert regions of Northern Mexico, I have never been near so much ‘water’ in my life. This drastic change in my environment and my relationship to the land has led me to re-group and focus on drawing inward. This pull towards the center has sparked an emphasis on design and semiotics within the serapes—pushing the boundaries of the material rather than viewing them as a launching point. This breaking down (which is inherent in my practice) brings me back to the serapes themselves and their history, which is the origin of my work. Thinking about ‘origins’ on a grander scale brings me to the elements. My proximity to them here in Miami, in a place where the elements seemingly converge, has woven into the designs I am creating since moving here.”

Kelly Tapia-Chuning, Sacred Water / Healing Womb, carrier of memories / a prayer for cleansing and nourishment, 2026 dismantled serape (Mexican blanket), copper nails, interfacing, 62 x 43 inches

The rich diversity of Miami shows up in the work of artist Regina Jestrow (b. 1978), an Italian-American textile artist based in Miami, Florida. Jestrow reinterprets quilt-making, a craft historically tied to domestic work, shared cultural knowledge, and feminist traditions, by bringing it into conversation with abstraction and research into dye techniques and art history (see her nod to Olga de Amaral in title of the fist image ff this essay).

“Miami and Florida have deeply inspired my work—the materials, the geometric patterns, and especially the colors. I source textiles from thrift shops in Hialeah, where I regularly find fabulous quinceañera dresses and an endless variety of men’s dress shirts and chino pants in every color imaginable. Thrifting in Miami isn’t just more colorful than anywhere else—it also reflects the city’s multicultural fabric. The textiles I find carry traces of the people and cultures that make Miami what it is, and that layered influence ends up embedded in my work.“ -Regina Jestrow

Quilting is the focus of the recent exhibition Piecework Legacies, Experimental Quilting in South Florida, running from April 10 to July 2, 2026, at the Miami-Dade Public Library Downtown Branch. The exhibit is curated by designer, artist and sustainability activist Pangea Kali Virga and her partner. Like many artists quoted here, Virga also credits Miami as a source of inspiration:

“Living in Miami has brought color to my life and my art. The dense lush nature here has guided my maximalist aesthetic tendencies and inspired me to integrate environmentalism. I regularly consider Miami’s history, its connection and disconnection from that history, and the subtle passing of time without definitive seasons. This all accumulates into artwork that deeply ponders time and our relationships with the natural world.” -Pangea Kali Virga

“Behold, I Show You A Mystery” by Pangea Kali Virga “The work is made from up-cycled textiles including interior design swatches, second hand clothing, vintage jewelry, and textile scraps from previous projects.”

The natural world, especially the medicinal plants, landscapes and sunsets of South Florida, are a constant in Alissa Alfonso’s textile work. Her soft sculpture exemplifies biocentrism, an ethical framework that assigns equal moral consideration and intrinsic value to all life forms. Alfonso raises awareness about the climate crisis gently, not with blaring alarms, but with a subtle call for those willing to listen and slow down. Despite the aforementioned recognition of textiles in the art market, Alfonso explains, “fiber art is often overlooked in institutional settings, especially when practiced by women. There’s a persistent bias against repurposed materials and so-called ‘soft’ mediums, as if they lack the seriousness or weight of more traditional forms. But these materials are rich with history, resistance, and emotional depth. One of the biggest challenges remains visibility. I’ve had to carve out space in a field that often centers male-dominated mediums, but that’s also where the power lies. Our work refuses to be quiet.”

Glades Night Landscape, 2025, Textile, 65” x 5” x 48,” Stuffed & stretched, hand dyed textile waste, oil stick, reused fiberfill, reused neoprene umbrella, fiber stabilizer, thread.

Alfonso’s art work is infused with wonder. Motherhood plays a central role in her practice. According to Alfonso, “as a mother, I’ve spent years creating in the margins, raising children while continuing to make work, often with limited resources and time. Many of us do this quietly and persistently, multitasking our way into visibility. That lived experience has shaped not only my materials but also my perspective, finding value in what others discard, and transforming it into something that speaks of care, resilience, and memory.”

Motherhood and playfulness also play a pivotal role for artist and educator Aurora Molina, (see image below). The constant and joyous presence of her daughter at many Miami art happenings, along with her art education initiatives, exemplifies the nurturing aspect of fiber arts. According to Molina, “there’s an undeniably playful aspect to all of my work. The soft sculptural creatures I make are created as if they were belligerent, ill-behaved children, demanding attention.”

Aurora Molina and child

The work of these incredible women is a testament to sustainability, communal care, and play. While digital screens and speed continue to dominate modern life, their textile art is earthy, tactile, and made at a slower pace. In an era of devastating ecological change, their fiber-based art is a powerful and healing tool for transformation, communication, hope and joy.

“Agency in the face of a more and more militarized, economically stratified, ideologically totalitarian world feels harder and harder to come by. Textile-based legacies contain the traces of human will, the human hand, a person’s personal choices.”

-ELLEN LESPERANCE