Adrienne Weiss

Doykeit, a Yiddish word that translates to “hereness,” is a political concept referencing diasporism and the call for Jews to fight for collective liberation wherever they are. The term comes from the Jewish Labor Bund, a Socialist organization founded in Vilna, Poland at the turn of the 20th century, in part known for their opposition to nationalism and the burgeoning Zionist movement. Doykeit resonates today for many Ashkenazi Jews in the diaspora looking to contextualize their activism within a larger history of solidarity politics.

This textile tells a material story of doykeit, of interconnectedness and repair. The weft is made of 2-ply handspun yarn constructed of raw wool from a friend of a friend’s farm in my home state of California twisted with raw wool from a friend of a friend’s farm in the Palestinian city of Tubas in the West Bank. And this wool is integrated with discarded upholstery leather from the family of a friend in Atlanta. These materials are woven together as a physical testament to how our strength in the struggle for freedom is reinforced by honoring the reality of our interconnectedness.

Based in Chicago, Adrienne Weiss (she/they) b. 1983 is a multidisciplinary fiber artist and educator whose practice is rooted in the understanding that corporeal awareness, research, ritual, dreams, activism, and art-making are interdependent phenomena that work together in service of personal and collective liberation. After many years as a self taught artist, Adrienne is now an M.F.A. candidate in Fiber and Material Studies and a recipient of the Pritzker Fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She got her B.A. in Art History and American Studies at UC Berkeley in 2005 and was a Bay Area public school educator for 15 years.

In 2022 she had a solo exhibition at Applied Contemporary Craft Gallery in Oakland, CA, the gallery of her mentor, Mary Catherine Bassett. She has also participated in a handful of group and juried shows including ARC Gallery and Women Made Gallery in Chicago.

Adrienne’s work is a sensual and earth-facing exploration of the ecological realities of identity, embodiment, and direct experience. She works primarily with filamentous materials and weaving techniques. She is interested in the life of intersecting lines, the metaphors they conjure, and finding a balance between manipulating them and letting them move in their own mystical ways. Adrienne utilizes the visual language of dreams, visions, lineage, and symbols to create a woven world of talismanic art.