Dara Etienne

My practice is provisional and driven by discarded goods. Acting as a repairman, I dress, mend, or reimagine abandoned materials for a second life. I utilize objects I find on sidewalks, source offcuts from local quilters, and gather scrap metal from construction sites. Availability informs my work due to my identity as a craftsperson and artist. Much of fine art is hidden behind institutional, financial, and material barriers but craft-- especially fibers-- is expansive and widely available to working class people. As a genderfluid maker, I am fascinated in crafts’ rich history in labor and gender and I operate where the two rub against each other.  My work focuses on contrasting hard and soft forms to emphasize the queer kinship between materials with different functions and future lives.

Dara Etienne is a multidisciplinary visual artist and craftsperson from Eastern Massachusetts. Using both

institutionally learned and self taught processes, their work expands the definition of craft through quilting,

weaving, knitting, and more. Recently based in Pittsburgh, they have completed residencies at Contemporary

Craft, the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, and Bunker Projects. They have had recent exhibitions through

Brew House Arts, Bunker Projects, Radiant Hall, The Future is Black, as well as a performance through the SPLICE

Institute. They are pursing their MFA in Sculpture and Dimensional Studies at Alfred University.