Kira Dominguez-Hultgren is a California, Utah, and Minnesota based writer and textile artist. In her third year at California College of the Arts, Dominguez Hultgren is earning a dual-degree MFA/MA in Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies. She studied French postcolonial theory and literature at Princeton University (B.A. Comparative Literature, 2003), and performance and fine arts in Río Negro, Argentina. From 2010-2012, she toured with an international women’s storytelling troupe, and was a featured teller at the Epuyén Regional Festival in Patagonia. While in Patagonia, she apprenticed with master weaver Mary Coronado, where Dominguez-Hultgren studied the process and history of indigenous warp-faced weaving of Mallín Ahogado on a Mapuche vertical post loom. Today, Dominguez-Hultgren combines her interests in postcolonial theory, oral storytelling, and weaving, as she seeks to decolonialize the family stories of racial identity she grew up hearing and repeating. Artist Statement Kira Dominguez Hultgren’s weavings are motivated by her ancestral and ongoing negotiations of approximate assimilation, synthetic identities, and the excesses that stride beyond categorizations. Chicanx, Punjabi, Hawaiian, Black, White: tensioned generations on display, warped and striped. Parading indigeneity in handspun weft winding through strands of polyurethane globalization: seducing, choking, colliding, caressing, changing. What are you? I am a weaver of ends, of each generational end. I am a promiscuity of culture in rayon and knit caught in the warp of a backstrap loom, picking out the pattern in a Mapuche poncho. But are these my stories to tell? I am Hollywood Hawaiian. My work is a tribute to my grandmother Lawhaii (Kikume) Johal. That’s Hawaii with an L. She grew up believing her family was native Hawaiian. Her uncle was Chief Mehevi, Chief Rakos, the authenticating bodily presence of the savage and of the exotic in the jungle movies of the 1920s-50s. What are you? Check the box. Are you human? Type the code. The “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” (CAPTCHA) is the puzzle that compels me to choose as I navigate the web. Prove you’re not a robot. But there are too many seams, too many constructed cultural affiliations sutured together. This is the performance of the unassimilated without homeland: please check one box only. Mark yourself as Other. Curriculum Vitae Education 2019 MFA Fine Arts and MA Visual and Critical Studies (anticipated), California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA 2012 Mapuche Textile Arts Apprenticeship, Ruca Mallín, Río Negro Province, Argentina 2003 BA, Comparative Literature, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Teaching/Visiting Artist Lectures 2018 Artist Lecture, “Material Rhetoric,” Craft Theory I, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA TA, California College of the Arts, Jacquard Weaving: Zeros and Ones, San Francisco, CA 2017 TA, California College of the Arts, Contemporary Art History and Theory (Graduate Survey), San Francisco, CA Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions 2019 O! ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,’ As some one somewhere sings about the sky, -Lord Byron, Don Juan, 4.110, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco, CA Weaver at Ends (Solo Exhibition and Workshop), Gensler San Francisco, CA 2018 Stitching and Weaving in the Digital Age, Résidence de France, San Francisco, CA All College Honors Award Exhibition, Hubbell Street Galleries, San Francisco, CA Wingspan (Solo Exhibition), Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco, CA MFA Exhibition I, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA This Message Has No Content, Embark Gallery, San Francisco, CA Caught in the Fray,College Avenue Galleries, Oakland, CA 2017 The Annual Murphy and Cadogan Awards Exhibition,SOMArts, San Francisco, CA TEXT TALES: Narrativity in Cloth & Thread,College Avenue Galleries, Oakland, CA 2016 The Immediate Archive,College Avenue Galleries, Oakland, CA 2015 Roots of the Maypole (Solo Exhibition), Codornices Park, Berkeley, CA, USA 2013 Iconography of Loss, 24-hour outdoor installation (Solo Exhibition), Victoria, MN, USA 2012 Duendes y Hadas de Fieltro, Antu Werken, Paraje Entre Ríos, RN, Argentina 2011 La Teoria del Color, Escuela Micael, Paraje Entre Ríos, RN, Argentina Lado Derecho, Centro Cultural, El Bolsón, RN, Argentina Selected Stage and Radio Storytelling Performances 2012 Epuyén Regional Festival, Epuyén, RN, Argentina Salon Harmos, El Bolsón, RN, Argentina Centro Cultural Eduardo Galeano, El Bolsón, RN, Argentina 2011 Cuentos Con Vos y Con Voz, La Goga Radio, El Bolsón, RN, Argentina Centro Cultural, Lago Puelo, RN, Argentina Conference Papers and Panels 2017 “Hawaii with an L: How Black and White Became Hawaiian in John Ford’s The Hurricane.” Paper presented at the Identities, Difference, and Power Symposium, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA Artists/Students of Color Experience in Higher Arts Education panel speaker, Murphy & Cadogan Equity in Arts Education Summit, SOMArts Cultrual Center, San Francisco, CA Honors and Awards 2018 Dennis Leon and Christin Nelson Scholarship CCA Curators Award All College Honors 2018 Graduate Scholarship in Graduate Fine Arts Award 2017 Edwin Anthony and Adalaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarship, San Francisco, CA Toni A. Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Textiles, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA 2016 Toni A. Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Textiles, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA