Écailles
Sheila Hicks American
Not on view
Born in Nebraska, Hicks moved to Paris in 1964 after several years living and traveling throughout Mexico and South America. The artist has often cited the art of Latin America, especially the complex work in fiber left behind by numerous indigenous peoples, as a precedent for her work. The copious fringe cascading from this weaving echoes the loose threads used to tether textile masks to bundled mummies in southern Peru. The composition’s most unexpected element is the five razor clamshells inserted, like haunting fingers, into the matrix of silk and wool. Various species of this saltwater mollusk, also known as a jackknife or bamboo clam, can be found today on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a potential metaphor for Hicks’s own peripatetic lifestyle.
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