Featured Press

"Anyone who’s tried to untangle a ball of yarn understands that fibers have a habit of knotting in ways that can seem impossible to unwind. These twisting, interlaced qualities ground much of Tali Weinberg’s fiber-based work as she pulls at the individual threads of our changing climate, using abstract weavings and textile sculptures to explore the inextricable nature of the crisis and the necessity for human intervention."

"Merging two-dimensional tapestry-like surfaces to sculptural, suspended pieces, Weinberg’s installations consider the relationship between the “flatness” of scientific data—the difficulty we often find in connecting statistics to real-life effects—and the three-dimensional, inherently immersive experience of the environment itself, from waterfalls to rolling waves.”

“…in a twist of beauty woven with ugly evidence, Weinberg’s art portrays the dreadful dangers of Earth’s worsening climate crisis. Lovely to behold, one piece suspended like a giant diaphanous scarf is delicate and iridescent as a dragonfly wing. Woven with dyed linen interspersed with monofilament fishing line, the luminous weaving — like other works in the show — artistically documents alarming climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. Weinberg’s works intertwine NOAA’s numerical information with landscape and humanity.”

“For most of us, pieces of plastic and junk mail are just that – junk. But for Tali Weinberg, these materials are the makings of art. Her art, and her commitment to draw attention to the world’s ecological crisis, go hand in hand.”

“How do we make sense of our complex relationships to and with the earth? The US-based artist Tali Weinberg combines climate data with craft by drawing on histories of weaving as a subversive language for women and other marginalized people. Her body of work creates a feminist, material archive of climate knowledge by translating climate data into abstracted landscapes and waterscapes.”

“Notions of destruction and loss, as well as gestures of natural beauty and grace, share the same stage in Weinberg’s emotionally layered constructions, which often combine organic materials with petrochemical products.”

“Physical data objects can help people come to terms with the interlocking environmental crises we face. And they may even make us more likely to do something about them…”

“From one angle, a rolling prairie of green and gold grass reaches for rust-colored hills on the horizon. A few steps later, it becomes a winding river snaking across the red clay floor—or maybe what you took for a river is actually a road…”

“This month I have for you a fascinating interview with Tali Weinberg, an artist who utilizes weaving, sculpture, thread drawing, and works on paper to visualize climate data. As she says in our interview below, weaving "is a way to speak beyond binaries." She understands "big data" to be "a relatively patriarchal, capitalist, colonial form of knowledge" and weaving as a way to reinsert knowledge from women and indigenous peoples. The resulting artwork--Woven Climate Datascapes--is a thought-provoking and multi-dimensional way of asking questions and seeking answers about the world that goes beyond straightforward scientific inquiry.”

“Bitter winters, suffocating summers, dry bed lakes, rising sea levels, increasing storms and their ferocity, and loss of animal and human habitat; all are on the rise as earth rebels against humanity. Can citizen action change this? Can data art alter our behaviour? Artists and crafters are exploring data visualisation—the translation of numerical data into easy-to-visualise graphics—as a way to communicate climate change. Knitters inspired by The Tempestry Project create scarves with colour gradations to indicate temperature fluctuations, while multidisciplinary artist Tali Weinberg balances the climate data in her weavings with personal and political reflections on the climate crisis.”

““For Weinberg, it’s all about asking questions. “Why materialize and interpret data in this way?” she asked, thinking about the questions viewers might ask when they see her work. “What aren’t we seeing? What do we not yet understand? What and who is missing? What constitutes knowledge? What is being hidden? How can we trace relationships, bind together, and interweave our struggles?” She weaves to bring this information, which can be overwhelming (and perhaps earth-shattering), down to a human level. Textiles are, after all, intimate: We wear them on our skin every day. In this way, Weinberg’s work condenses a large planetary crisis into a personal one.”

"Tali Weinberg is an artist and a translator. Her timely and relevant works are tangible translations of ideas, conversations, and data pertaining to social justice. Meaning is transmitted through the fiber she chooses and dye materials steeped in histories of their own, but also by utilizing her knowledge of textiles and language to make new inquiries. Social and cultural theories seamlessly materialize through her extensive research and all-encompassing practice."