Visa
June Wayne, Visa Series
87 x 63 in. (2318 x 160 cm)
Tapestry, unique example, woven by Pierre Daquin, Atelier de Saint Cyr.
1972
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
MB Abram Galleries, 2018; David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, 2013; Art Institute of Chicago, 2010; Pomona College, 1978; Van Doren Gallery, 1976; Galerie La Demeure, 1974; Van Doren Gallery, 1974; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 1973.
COMMENTS
In this monumental tapestry a fingerprint is woven, straddling the waves below and the outer cosmos above, that extraterrestrial space soon occupying Wayne’s artistic attention.
For her tapestries focusing on tidal waves, DNA and the cosmos, Wayne paradoxically chose a medium and historic textile ateliers associated with an antique and royal past, rather than the space age of which Wayne had become so knowledgeable.
“The idea of the fingerprint arose, in part, from the extraordinary physical similarity between the pattern of a fingerprint and the pattern of oxidation on a zinc plate; also from the paradox that the fingerprint, unique to each person, helps the state to identify you.”
"The Visa idea is based on the fact that a fingerprint is unique to each of us, and therefore makes it easier to hunt us down. The fingerprint imprisons us a priori as far as the state is concerned. I thought that if you made the image very large, it would loom up like a planet or a mirage against the sky. They derive from my own fingerprints, but I changed them because I didn’t want anyone to be able to catch me. I was aware of and frightened by the Hitler era.”
— June Wayne from A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne - The Art of Everything by Robert P. Conway, Rutgers University Press.
