I weave on an upright tension loom, a technology of Indigenous origin. I view my loom as a powerful connection to culture, identity, and history. The survival and continuation of cultural art forms lies in the hands of those who remember and carry forward the teachings of our ancestors. My quest to learn and preserve my peoples' textile traditions have led to an ongoing journey of piecing together fragments of memory, oral histories, and archaeological material into my work.
My textiles draw on ancient techniques once developed for utilitarian needs and purposes. Today many of my ancestral weaving techniques are in danger of being forgotten. I fuse bold geometric designs with a polychromatic saturation of colors to reflect my individual and technical freedom of expression. I view my tapestries as a living record of the cultural survival of my people and as a testament to the current vitality of my heritage. Each tapestry I create is unique not only to me but to the genre of Navajo textiles my work is descended from.
"Venancio Aragon is a young Navajo weaver with a great eye and the extraordinary technical skill it takes to execute his remarkable textiles. He has burst onto the Navajo weaving scene with some of the most gorgeous visual and optically tantalizing textiles I have ever seen. He credits his mother (Irveta Aragon), also a weaver, for teaching him how to weave. I do believe that Venancio will ultimately take a unique place in the world of Navajo weaving and in the broader world of American modern art."
-Carol Ann Mackay, Life trustee of the Heard Museum and fifty + year collector of Navajo weaving.
My textiles draw on ancient techniques once developed for utilitarian needs and purposes. Today many of my ancestral weaving techniques are in danger of being forgotten. I fuse bold geometric designs with a polychromatic saturation of colors to reflect my individual and technical freedom of expression. I view my tapestries as a living record of the cultural survival of my people and as a testament to the current vitality of my heritage. Each tapestry I create is unique not only to me but to the genre of Navajo textiles my work is descended from.
"Venancio Aragon is a young Navajo weaver with a great eye and the extraordinary technical skill it takes to execute his remarkable textiles. He has burst onto the Navajo weaving scene with some of the most gorgeous visual and optically tantalizing textiles I have ever seen. He credits his mother (Irveta Aragon), also a weaver, for teaching him how to weave. I do believe that Venancio will ultimately take a unique place in the world of Navajo weaving and in the broader world of American modern art."
-Carol Ann Mackay, Life trustee of the Heard Museum and fifty + year collector of Navajo weaving.