BLOODLINE no. 4

BLOODLINE no.3 and BLOODLINE no.4, constructed of copper and electric wire, both representing the artists inquiry into epigenetics. Tia Keo explains: “Combining scientific and mythical concepts, I imagine the ways that my grandmothers are part of me despite the fact that I have no lived experience with them. What began as a quest to define the void that I perceive (they would have filled) has led me on a journey of uncovering history that is both fact and inferred.

The undulating copper conduit symbolizes the bloodline, a simplified single channel of lineage. The hanging coils suggest spiraling DNA or umbilical cords of experience and information that inform our blood and our inherited memory. Epigenetics suggest that our lived experiences can modify the expression of our genes without changing the genetic code itself and one of my own lived experiences has been integral to my current work.

Nearly twenty years after learning to weave in my ancestral land of Finland in 1995, I was able to see how the time spent with two elder women in the room impressed a sensation of what it might’ve been like to be with my grandmothers. That emotion merged with the motions of weaving and ignited something in me that was passionate and everlasting. Weaving has literally and figuratively become my intuitive language, connecting me to my grandmothers and to a vast lineage of women who worked with their hands. If their DNA and epigenetic memory flows through my veins, the process of handwork brings me closer to them – if only in my perception of experience.”

Scheduled to be on view in the Duluth City Hall Mayor Reception Room Spring 2020; however, due to Covid-19 artwork was not installed in City Hall this season. Tia Keo's BLOODLINE no. 3 and BLOODLINE no. 4 are on view in the Duluth Art Institute's John Steffl Gallery throughout Summer 2020.