Tali Weinberg

Tali Weinberg’s work is held in public and private collections and is exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include the Griffith Art Museum, 21C Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, University of Colorado Art Museum, Center for Craft, Praxis, and Form & Concept. Her art has been featured in academic journals and popular press including the New York Times, onEarth Magazine, Surface Design Journal, Fiber Art Now, and Ecotone. Honors include the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Serenbe Fellowship, Windgate Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, Lia Cook Jacquard Residency, SciArt Bridge Residency for cross-disciplinary collaboration, and a residency at the Museum of Art and Design, among others. She has taught at California College of the Arts (CCA), University of Tulsa, and Penland School of Craft. Tali holds an MFA from CCA and a BA and MA from New York University.

About the Series

I interweave petrochemical-derived materials, plant material, and watershed climate data to draw connections between rising temperatures, fossil fuel extraction, and the buildup of toxic plastics in the earth, water, and our bodies.

In each woven Silt Study, temperature data for one of the 18 major US river basins is materialized as hand-dyed, color-coded cotton. In my translation of the data, 126 years takes form as 18 rows of color, each row an average of 7 years of temperature. Silt—tiny particles of eroded rocks and mineral—are carried by flowing water, eventually deposited elsewhere as sediment. When ecosystems are polluted, silt goes from benign to destructive, carrying with it the toxins it is exposed to as it moves from one part of a watershed to another. As the detritus of our human life on land runs downstream and then circulates back through bodies, watersheds are one window into the interdependence of ecological and human health.

In the Drainage Studies this same data for the 18 river basins is coiled along bundles of medical tubing and entwined together. While petrochemical pipelines run through the earth, petrochemical-derived medical tubes are pipelines that run through and around our bodies. These tubes are used for chemo-drug delivery and other medical interventions for illnesses that often have the same causes as ecological destruction.