Tanya Aguiñiga

Tanya Aguiñiga (born 1978, in San Diego, California) is a Los Angeles–based artist, designer, and activist.

Early life and education Although she was born in the United States, Aguiñiga spent her childhood living in Tijuana, Mexico. From ages 4 to 18, she travelled several hours daily across the border to attend school in San Diego, an experience that would influence her later life and work.

Art and design career

Aguiñiga began designing furniture in 1997 while she was still an undergraduate student. Her first design job was working as a designer and fabricator off-camera for the DIY Network show called Freeform Furniture. Using a range of natural materials from beeswax to wool to human hair, Aguiñiga crafts furniture, textiles, wearable pieces, sculptures, and site-specific installations. In addition to designing furniture, jewelry, and other small scale pieces, she has extended her design mediums to fiber and creates weavings with materials such as woven jute, wool, silk, and cotton. She manages a team of nearly all female assistants in the creation of large format wall, woven hangings, by commission.

Aguiñiga's work has been featured in the PBS series Craft in America and in a 2011 site-specific exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, among many other venues. Fashion designer Ulla Johnson, commissioned a piece by Aguiñiga for her shop in New York.

From July 23 through September 17, 2016, Aguiñiga's "Teetering of the Marginal" accompanied pieces by Lenore Tawney and Loie Hollowell in a gallery exhibit titled 3 Women. The 1977 film 3 Women, written and directed by Robert Altman and starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule, provided inspiration to The Landing to gather the artists for the exhibit.

In May through October 2018 Aguiñiga had a solo exhibition of her work at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City titled "Tanya Aguiñiga: Craft and Care". The show prominently featured her project AMBOS ("Art Made Between Opposite Sides"), that addresses life on the Mexican-American border. In Spanish "ambos" means both and according to the project's website the mission of AMBOS is to "express and document border emotion through art made on opposite sides by providing a platform to bi-national artists along the border." Her work was also featured in Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.

In 2021, Aguiñiga received the 26th Annual Heinz Award for the Arts.

In early 2022, Aguiñiga lead a social justice focused BIPOC Exchange at the newly reopened Frieze Los Angeles. The fellowship provides $50,000 and was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation and the result of a collaboration of the US Latinx Art Forum and the New York Foundation of the Arts.

Her work, Metabolizing the Border, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign.

In early 2023, Aguiñiga was commissioned by High Museum of Art to create “a monumental celebratory canopy … as its eighth site-specific installation the Woodruff Arts Center’s Carroll Slater Sifly Piazza.” The work was titled HAPPY JOYLANTA and was on display May 14 through November 26, 2023.

Activism Aguiñiga is responsible for multiple "performance crafting" happenings, including tying herself to the Beverly Hills sign and weaving while wearing traditional Mexican garments.

Collections

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Los Angeles County Museum of Art