Iliana emilia garcía, who has worked in the building for six and a half years, says it’s the first time it has been included in the Wide Open event. Her studio is a narrow, closet-like space, its walls covered with pinned-up prints, framed watercolors, drawings, and two large canvases. A pretty regular scene — until I register the fact that basically everything in the room is a representation of a chair or chairs.
“I’ve been working on chairs for 20 years —” garcía says, before glancing at the floor and whispering, “— actually, more than 20 years. But that dates me.”
“The chair ... holds a lot of things. A lot of memories, too — for me, it’s like home, family, and community. When I see a chair, I wonder if someone just left, or if someone’s coming. There’s a lot of expectation and ambiguity in the object,” she continued. “In the way that we deconstruct our history, I’m deconstructing the chair. That also becomes part of my history.”
