Skip to main content

Header Navigation

Artists

John Paul Morabito

They // Them // Theirs

Transdisciplinary Weaver

Kent, Ohio

A person in cream-colored sweater leans on a table and gazing into the camera. They are standing in a workspace in front of shelves lined with colorful skeins of thread.

Photo by Ian Vecchiotti.

I am defiantly a weaver. Through this position, I reconsider tapestry as a modality in which image, matter, technology, and embodiment provide productive conflicts for constructing form.”

Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. Morabito approaches weaving as an ontological practice through which blasphemy, devotion, the incarnational spirit of Catholicism, the decadence of drag, and queer grace are bound as resonant sensibilities within their opulent tapestries. They have exhibited at international galleries and museums including the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (North-Salem, NC); CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions (San Francisco); Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects (Long Island City, NY); Document (Chicago); the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA); the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Collections include the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal) and the Textile Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their critical writing has been published in Art China, The Textile Reader 2 (China Academy of Art), The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, Textile: Cloth and Culture, and Bloomsbury’s forthcoming Encyclopedia of World Textiles. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morabito is Assistant Professor and Head of Textiles at the Kent State University School of Art. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Good Chaos.

This artist page was last updated on: 08.13.2024

A vertical rectangular-shaped tapestry. The top quarter of the composition is a completed tapestry composed of grid pattern in warm purples and taupes overlaid with a stepped diagonal pattern brocaded in light blues, deep purples, warm oranges, pinks, and golds. The bottom three quarters of the composition are unwoven with intricately beaded strands of thread that create a vibrating pattern of intersecting chevrons in yellows, golds, ochres, blues, greens, and purples. A few loose strands are wisped upward creating thin U-shaped lines. Additional loose strands dangle downward to puddle onto the floor.

For Félix (can’t get you out of my head) by John Paul Morabito, 2023. Linne, wool, gold leaf thread, and glass beads. 92 × 47 inches.

Photo by Tim Safranek.

A vertical rectangular-shaped tapestry. The top quarter of the composition is a completed tapestry composed of geometric patterning in iridescent reds, oranges, and blues. The bottom three quarters of the composition are unwoven with intricately beaded strands of thread that create a vibrating pattern of intersecting chevrons in saturated reds, oranges, pinks, purples, and blues. A few loose strands are wisped upward creating thin U-shaped lines.

For Félix (scarlet like the memory of you inside me) by John Paul Morabito, 2023. Cotton and glass beads. 88 × 46 inches.

Photo by Tim Safranek.

A vertical rectangular-shaped tapestry. The top quarter of the composition is a completed tapestry composed of geometric zig-zag patterning in electric yellows, greens, and violets. The bottom three quarters of the composition are unwoven with intricately-beaded strands of thread that create a vibrating pattern of criss-crossed diagonals in glowing yellows, oranges, pinks, greens, blues, turquoises, and purples. A few loose strands are wisped upward creating thin U-shaped lines. Additional loose strands dangle downward to puddle onto the floor.

For Félix (yellow like dancing through the endless night) by John Paul Morabito, 2023. Cotton and glass beads. 88 × 46 inches.

Photo by Tim Safranek.