INTEND | Tia Keobounpheng

The work in this exhibition holds the space between intention & impact and speaks to the committed inner work of learning to truly see ourselves in context.  Keoboupheng’s meticulously drawn and stitched paperwork can only be seen in reflections from mirrors on the wall. The messier beauty of the reverse stitching, typically the hidden side, faces the audience. It is her roadmap, her place on earth, her geometry, with precision lines collapsing into frayed edges and loose ends.

Tia Keobounpheng's current body of work started with ancestral research and reclaiming a bloodline that was nearly lost to her family, and through that, seeing her coping mechanisms within the broader story of their lives, within the broader scope of history and systemic forces. It started her search for meaning from snippets of disconnected threads impacted by colonization, migration, assimilation, and white supremacy.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tia Keobounpheng is a contemporary textile artist using metal & fiber techniques as a language to speak about complex human issues engaging with concepts of epigenetics, ancestral memory, inherited trauma, and historic assimilation to the construct of whiteness. Keobounpheng is a designer/maker and artist living and working in North Minneapolis. She is a recipient of the 2017, 2020, and 2022 MN State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, the 2018 McKnight Foundation’s Next Step Fund, and the 2023 Folk Arts and Cultural Traditions Grant.  Her work has been exhibited at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis; the Finlandia University Gallery in Hancock, Michigan; the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul; and the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota. Her laser-cut jewelry has been sold to design retailers nationwide for over a decade. Keobounpheng will have a solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art as part of their MAEP program in July 2023 and recently was added to the Minnesota Museum of American Art’s permanent collection through a purchase award at the Minnesota State Fair Fine Art Exhibition.

Editor's note: This exhibition will show simultaneously with In a Family Way by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw