In Liminal Language, on view in Penland’s FOCUS Gallery through July 26, artists Sarita Westrup and Iren Tete explore the tension between material, memory, and identity. Westrup, raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, uses basketry techniques and materials like reed, mortar, wire, and cochineal ink to reflect on bi-cultural heritage, migration, and the shifting nature of home. “Westrup’s materials exist in a compelling balance between strength and permeability, suspended between practical utility and poetic abstraction,” Penland shares. Tete, born in Bulgaria during the fall of communism, constructs ceramic forms that evoke speculative architecture and imagined relics. “Tete’s works explore the interplay of balance and instability, weight and lightness, embedding emotional resonance and temporal shifts within their surfaces,” the gallery notes. Together, the artists’ sculptural works dwell in liminal spaces: between cultures, between object and architecture, and between memory and reinvention.
Liminal Language: Through July 26
FOCUS Gallery at Penland Gallery / 3135 Conley Ridge Rd., Penland / penland.org/gallery