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Lorien Suárez-Kanerva

@loriensuarez

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Artist | Large-scale paintings & fiber works
Geometry, nature & belonging
Museum exhibitions: • Writer | Book Coalescing Geometries, magazine articles

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I am humbled and pleased to share Donald Kuspit’s recent article on my work for WhiteHot Magazine.
#whitehotmagazine #donaldkuspit #alfrednorthwhitehead #teilharddechardin #spiritualabstraction #wassilykandinsky #loriensuarez #loriensuarezkanerva #americantranscendentalism #abstractpainting #geometricabstraction #realisticnaturalism by @loriensuarez

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3 years ago

A few more photos from the exhibition!
Pleased to share exhibition photographs from Visionary Geometries: A Solo Exhibition
📅 Exhibition Dates: June 13 – October 18, 2025
📍 Museum of Arts and Sciences, 4182 Forsyth Road, Macon, GA 31210
#masmacon
#VisionaryGeometries #LorienSuarezKanerva #GeometricAbstraction #AbstractArt #ContemporaryArt #MuseumExhibition #SoloExhibition #WomenInArt #ArtInGeorgia #MaconGA #MuseumOfArtsAndSciences #ColorAndGeometry #ArtExhibition2025 #ModernArt #KaleidoscopicArt #GeometricArt #SpatialArt #FineArtExhibition #ArtOpening #artinmuseums by @loriensuarez

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a year ago

Pleased to share exhibition photographs from Visionary Geometries: A Solo Exhibition
📅 Exhibition Dates: January 20 - April 23, 2026
📍Phillips Art Museum, Nissley Gallery, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
#phillipsmuseum #fandmcollege #loriensuarez by @loriensuarez

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8 months ago

Today, October 10th, would have been my mother’s birthday. Four years have passed since her passing, but her love and influence remain with me.

I treasure this photograph of us painting together—a beautiful reminder of how she nurtured my creativity from the very beginning.

Happy birthday, Mom. Your love lives on in my heart and in the art I create. ❤️

Hoy, 10 de octubre, habría sido el cumpleaños de mi madre. Han pasado cuatro años desde su fallecimiento, pero su amor y su influencia siguen conmigo.

Atesoro esta fotografía de las dos pintando juntas, un hermoso recordatorio de cómo fomentó mi creatividad desde el principio.

Feliz cumpleaños, mamá. Tu amor vive en mi corazón y en el arte que creo. ❤️ by @loriensuarez

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6 days ago

Drift and Root: Ancestral Land and Sky
68 × 35 in.
Mixed-media tapestry

This completed work from my ongoing Drift and Root series explores migration, ancestry, memory, and belonging through layers of weaving, beadwork, open warp, and fiber.

The densely woven lower passages evoke ancestral land—accumulated histories and landscapes informed by my family genealogy, including Muisca ancestry connected to Boyacá, Colombia, and DNA evidence of ancestry across West and West-Central Africa, from Senegal and Guinea through Ghana and Nigeria to Congo and Angola. Rather than reproducing specific traditional designs, these histories enter the work through my own evolving language of geometry, pattern, material, and memory.

Along the lowest woven edge, a narrow band of 4 mm beads represents the most distant layer of migration—a subtle material trace of ancestry receding beyond recoverable family memory.

The composition gradually opens from land into sky. Migrating geese, inspired by the migration monument I encountered in Hanko, Finland, in 2000, move through exposed warp toward the northern lights. The aurora borealis connects the work to my Finnish ancestry and to my research into the landscapes and textile traditions of northern Finland and the Sámi people, for whom the aurora has long held cultural and spiritual significance. Here, woven color gradually dissolves into translucent beads and exposed threads—matter becoming light, distance, and memory.

I am especially grateful for my father’s extensive genealogical research and his book, Leaves in the Wind, which have helped me trace these intersecting histories.

Ancestral Land and Sky considers migration not as a single journey, but as movements accumulated across generations—some documented, others surviving as fragments, genetic traces, inherited memory, and the landscapes we continue to carry with us.

#FiberArt #contemporarytapestry #weavingart by @loriensuarez

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21 days ago

This ongoing tapestry, part of my Drift and Root series, explores migration, ancestry, memory, and belonging through weaving and beadwork. As the work evolves, I am researching textile traditions, patterns, and symbolism connected to my ancestral geographies and interpreting them through my own contemporary visual language.

The migrating geese are adapted from the emigration monument at Hanko, Finland, which I visited in the summer of 2000. Here they become a broader image of passage—across places, generations, and very different histories of migration.

The work begins conceptually in Africa, both as humanity’s ancestral homeland and through my African-Colombian lineage. My genealogy traces to Inés Redes Venero, an early seventeenth-century Black ancestor recorded as negra horra, a woman who had experienced enslavement and obtained her freedom. Her daughter, Yumar de Silva, my direct ancestor, was recorded as a free Black woman.

I am especially grateful to my father, Ricardo Suárez-Gärtner, whose extensive genealogical research and book, Leaves in the Wind, have provided an invaluable foundation for this exploration.

Indigenous textile traditions of Colombia and Venezuela also inform the evolving woven language, while the geometric beadwork continues my Wheel within a Wheel vocabulary, drawing upon Plato and Euclid and ideas of geometry, proportion, and natural order.

Above, the colors move toward the aurora borealis, connecting the work to Finland, Sápmi, and my Sámi ancestry.

From African earth to the northern lights, I am exploring how migration becomes memory, and how ancestry can be continually woven into new forms.

#FiberArt #ContemporaryTextileArt #MigrationAndMemory by @loriensuarez

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23 days ago

Work in progress.
The tapestry continues to grow upward—moving from landscape, memory, and rooted forms into migration and flight. Geese move through woven clouds and an emerging field of transparent beadwork, where geometric fragments begin to suggest an underlying order: pathways, constellations, and structures that connect the natural world.

I’m allowing this upper section to remain more open and atmospheric than the dense terrain below, working with transparency, space, and light as part of the weave.

Drift and Root series, 2026
Handwoven mixed-media tapestry in progress

#ContemporaryTapestry #FiberArt #ContemporaryFiberArt by @loriensuarez

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a month ago

Work in Progress — new Drift and Root weaving

The tapestry continues to evolve on the loom. I am bringing together landscapes, botanical forms, and inherited and researched patterns—all creatively altered and reimagined as distinctive motifs. As I work upward, I am thinking increasingly about humanity’s long relationship with pattern: from some of our earliest geometric marks and signs to the visual languages carried through weaving across cultures and generations. I am interested in how these forms communicate meaning, and in art itself as a language—one capable of carrying memory, identity, place, and experience beyond words.

The open warp is intentional at this stage. New elements will enter the upper field as the work continues, allowing the tapestry to develop as an accumulation of place, memory, migration, and culture.

#contemporaryfiberart #fiberart #weavingtapestry by @loriensuarez

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2 months ago

California Native: Gray Fox, Pinyon Jays and Elegant Clarkia
60 × 30 inches
Punch-needle tapestry

A gray fox and a family of Pinyon Jays are woven among flowering plants in a composition that emphasizes biodiversity, seasonal abundance, and ecological connection. Thousands of hand-punched loops create a dimensional surface that invites close viewing while reflecting the intricate relationships found within California’s native landscapes.

#contemporarytapestry #CaliforniaNativePlants #PinyonJays by @loriensuarez

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2 months ago

Chaparral Reverie and California in Bloom— each 60 x 45 inches—two tapestries in dialogue, celebrating the diversity of California’s native landscapes. From the quiet presence of wildlife nestled within chaparral to the exuberance of a spring superbloom, each piece is hand tufted, loop by loop, inviting a slower way of seeing and evoking the intricate relationships that sustain our ecosystems.

Chaparral Reverie • 45 × 60 in.
California in Bloom • 45 × 60 in.

#ContemporaryFiberArt #CaliforniaNativePlants #textileart by @loriensuarez

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3 months ago

California in Bloom
2026 • Punch needle cotton and acrylic yarn tapestry • 60 × 45 inches

Inspired by California’s remarkable wildflower displays, Superbloom celebrates the diversity, resilience, and interconnected beauty of native flora through richly textured fiber and vibrant color. Part of my ongoing series, Drift and Root.

#ContemporaryFiberArt #handmadetextiles #CaliforniaWildflowers by @loriensuarez

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3 months ago

Chaparral Reverie - California Native Habitat series (45 x 60 in., hand-tufted tapestry)

Matilija poppies, desert willow blossoms, and a California bobcat emerge as the beginning of this tapestry’s meditation on the biodiversity of Southern California’s native ecosystems. Inspired by the flora and fauna of chaparral, foothill, and desert-edge habitats from my studio-day to day-experiences; the work reflects the interconnected relationships that sustain life across the region. Through texture, color, and scale, the tapestry honors both the beauty and resilience of California’s natural landscapes. #fiberart #contemporarytapestry #californiawild by @loriensuarez

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4 months ago