Margi Weir | Bearing Witness: Border Edition

Bearing Witness: Border Edition featuring Margi Weir
Opening Reception: August 9, 2019 7-10PM
Exhibition Dates:| August 9, 2019 - September 7, 2019


This exhibition is funded in part by the Puffin Foundation LTD.

Clamp Light Artist Studios and Gallery is proud to present Bearing Witness: Border Edition, a solo exhibition featuring the work of artist Margi Weir. In the exhibition the artist will explore social, environmental, and political topics pertaining to today’s border crisis. The artist references the recent crisis at the US southern border through the exploration of the separation of migrant children from their parents and their subsequent imprisonment, as well as the tug-of-war over the building of the border wall itself. The artist will blend this new work that contemplates
barriers and fences with iterations of previous works that deal with social concerns such as gun violence, politics, and the environment.


about the artist

Margi Weir, an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, calls upon figurative arrangements and presents them in a tapestry-like fashion; the juxtaposition of elements creates unique pleasing patterns, blurring—but not hiding—the socio-political and ecological themes in her pieces. This can be seen in her current body of work which references the humanitarian crisis at the US Southern Border. Earlier work dealt with gun violence, politics and the environment.

In 2017, the Puffin Foundation awarded Weir a grant to support her work on gun violence that was shown in solo shows at St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley in Ferguson, MO and at the Hardesty Art Center in Tulsa OK. Weir has won numerous awards for her work, including a 2016 Best of Show Grand Prize at the Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center as well as a 2015 Best of Show award in the Human Rights Exhibition, South Texas College, McAllen, TX. Additionally, she has had many solo exhibitions across the country, notably at Ivan Karp’s OK Harris Gallery in New York and the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. She has completed installation pieces at Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA), Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans LA), Central Features Gallery (Albuquerque NM), Lexington Art League (Lexington KY), the Elaine Jacob Gallery (Detroit, MI), Coastal Carolina University (Conway, SC), and the Las Cruces Museum of Art (Las Cruces, NM).

Margi Weir earned her MFA in painting from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); her MA in painting from New Mexico State University; her BFA in painting from San Francisco Art Institute; and her BA in art history from Wheaton College, Massachusetts.