Ruth Asawa Retrospective

In April 2026, while in France for my exhibitions, we had a chance to take a few days to visit Spain. I had been wanting to see the Guggenheim in Blibao, Spain for years, and had somehow never managed to get there on any of my previous trips to France. This time, though, we were incredibly fortunate to finally get to see the museum itself, AND just happened to be there for the Ruth Asawa Retrospective. It was absolutely life changing.

The show runs until Sept 13, 2026, and I cannot recommend it enough. If you are anywhere near Bilbao, Spain, please go see this show!

More information (from the museum) is available here

We arrived at the Guggenheim on a chilly, rainy April morning.

For many years, I have had people tell me that my work reminded them of Ruth Asawa's. And, honestly, I never, not once, saw any connection whatsoever. I chalk that up to the fact that I am a very technical WEAVER. Weaving is my medium and what Asawa did was looping, or knotless netting, but absolutely not weaving. She used wire, and not "basket materials", and while I have done some podlike pieces here and there, I thought she exclusively made pods. So, in my mind, our work was completely different. I just did not see a connection at all, not in form, not in style.

So, while I wanted to see the Guggenheim, and I thought "What a funny coincidence that there happens to be a Ruth Asawa retrospective there" I didn't really expect to be too excited, much less MOVED by the exhibition.

Seeing the pieces up close, though, was a revelation; the forms are incredible. But, reading her words, how she thought about her work, the way she saw things really struck me. She used a similar vocabulary to me, she saw things in a similar way, she was trying to manipulate form in ways that I try to manipulate form. I left the exhibition feeling I had found a kindred spirit, and that I had been changed in some way by the experience. It was wholly unexpected.

The retrospective began in 1940, in her college days. Much like me, she was studying something completely different, stumbled across basketry and felt a seismic shift.

"I continued one basket into a closed form and slowly, while learning to control the medium, began to realize the exciting potential in this way of making sculpture." Ruth Asawa

I was immediately entranced.

In her drawings and sketches, she seemed to always want to capture the minute detail of an object, and the way patterns combine to create the larger picture which was also pretty revelatory for me. Plus, check out the basket weave!

Her early commercial work included this origami wall panel, which pulled yet another heartstring for me- I've been doing origami since I was five. But, again, it was her WORDS: "I am interested in producing to sell, but the more I work, the more ideas I get and want to experiment, but experimenting is not producing, since there are always many flops." Dang. Truer words were never spoken. I often find myself wanting to experiment, but instead making something I know will work because I have a deadline or something. It is so hard to allow yourself to play when everything is so commodified.

Forms within forms. Everything is connected.

These are the most iconic Ruth Asawa pieces. In person, they are ethereal- the looped wire giving the illusion of transparency and airiness, but to my eye, they are also very solid structures (which I really appreciate). Obviously I did not get to touch them, and it's not my medium, but the wire seems to be a heavy enough gauge that would form a fairly stable structure, which is just to say that if you did touch them, I don't think they would give under that pressure. Also, they are so large- many of these pieces are taller than me! It took my breath away to see them all together, as a complete body of work.

When I walked into this gallery, my breath caught. A lot of these pieces are basically exploded toruses. I stared at the gold one (below) for the longest time, trying to decide if it could be done with weaving or if the wire looping is an inherently more adaptable process. I'm still working on that. I do think the wire looping definitely has more flexibility of form. What's hilarious is that I had been working on a piece prior to this trip that basically was an exploded torus. I ultimately stopped working on it because I didn't like the size of the reed I had chosen- it was way too flimsy for the size of the piece, but I'm thinking of revisiting the concept now... I just love the way they look.

It feels so pretentious to make comparisons between myself and other artists, especially ones of this magnitude, but I noticed a lot of parallels between Asawa and me: the way we look(ed) for and see patterns, the ways we seek (sought) to manipulate and change expected forms: "You can show inside and outside, and inside and outside are connected...Everything is connected, continuous." This is also a sort of driving force for me, too, and something I love in my own work.

She worked sitting cross-legged on the floor in her studio, which I have always done, although I do have a big comfy chair now, that I sometimes remember to sit in. It's easier on the lower back.

Additionally, she did not typically title her pieces. I don't know if, like me, she didn't want to influence the viewer's understanding of the piece: wanting them to see what they wanted to see instead of what she saw, or, if the journalists who wrote that she "couldn't be bothered to name them" or that she was "more interested in making them than naming them" more accurately described her reasoning. But, I like that I share that with her, even though people always complain to me when I don't give my pieces "proper" names.

She wanted to make "sculpture that would itself have a form and volume, whose silhouette would also have volume, and sculpture whose SHADOW [emphasis mine] would have volume." And I cannot even tell you how much I LOVE that. I had never considered the idea of three dimensional shadow before, but I am obsessed with the idea now. It makes me want three dimensional shadows, too. I just keep thinking about how incredible that would be. I'm suddenly way more curious about negative space than I have been in a long while, and I think it's due to this show and this concept. We'll see what happens...

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