John Paul Morabito

Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. Morabito approaches weaving as an ontological practice through which blasphemy, devotion, the incarnational spirit of Catholicism, the decadence of drag, and queer grace are bound as resonant sensibilities within their opulent tapestries. They have exhibited at international galleries and museums including the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (North-Salem, NC); CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions (San Francisco); Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects (Long Island City, NY); Document (Chicago); the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA); the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Collections include the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal) and the Textile Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their critical writing has been published in Art China, The Textile Reader 2 (China Academy of Art), The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, Textile: Cloth and Culture, and Bloomsbury’s forthcoming Encyclopedia of World Textiles. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morabito is Assistant Professor and Head of Textiles at the Kent State University School of Art. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles.