Zoom Meeting

Zoom Meeting takes two handwoven tapestries made during the early days of the pandemic and puts them into the context of a public flag. The tapestries depict inflatable Air Dancers, waving aimlessly within elaborate Zoom frames, and chaotic digital marks. The Air Dancers contort in and out of the frame, dancing in front of green-screened backgrounds that are steeped in both reality and fiction. The figures are trying to stay positive, but their emptiness and neuroticism lingers. 

The tapestries reflect our shift in communication during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the confusing mix of malaise, hopefulness, anxiety, and urge for human connection commonly felt while living within the crisis. Suffused with both humor and societal reflection, Zoom Meeting references the comedic structure of memes, and continues with the tradition of tapestry weaving being used as a narrative tool. By transposing the tapestries onto a waving flag, the Air Dancers are given the space to move about freely in public space, their original intended domain.

Kayla Mattes is a visual artist, born in 1989, living and working in Los Angeles, CA. She archives the ephemeral vernacular of digital culture through the interconnected threads of tapestry. Recent exhibitions include Richard Heller Gallery (Los Angeles), New Image Art (Los Angeles), Monya Rowe Gallery (New York), and Collaborations (Copenhagen). Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, i-D, It’s Nice That, and Sculpture Magazine, and is included in the book, Weavers: Contemporary Makers on the Loom, written by Katie Tregidden and published by Ludion. She received a BFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and an MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2019.

Photo credit Carolyn Wachnicki