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Indira Allegra

Oakland, CA

Indira Allegra is a conceptual artist and founder of Cazimi Studio. Cazimi is derived from an Arabic phrase meaning “in the heart of the Sun”. Cazimi Studio is a partner to those seeking to take a new shape or transform the feeling of a site. The studio is unique in its emphases on performance, publication and pedagogy along with the integration of spiritual care as preferred design solutions in lieu of large scale structures which would have greater planetary impact. Observing the world like poets, threads of connection between disparate experiences can be discovered. Moving as weavers, these threads can be interlaced into a greater whole.

Allegra’s work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Art Journal, BOMB Magazine, e-flux, SF Chronicle, KQED and ARTFORUM and in exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Arts Incubator in Chicago, Center for Craft Creativity and Design, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Museum of the African Diaspora among others. 

Allegra’s writing has been featured in Theater, TEXTILE: Cloth and Culture, American Craft Magazine, Panorama Journal, Manual: A Journal About Art & Its Making, Leonardo and Material Intelligence among others. They have been the recipient of numerous awards including United States Artists Fellowship, Burke Prize, Gerbode Choreographer Award, Art Matters Fellowship, Mike Kelley Artist Project Grant and CripTech Metaverse Fellowship.


Events

TEXERE


Indira Allegra is a conceptual artist and founder of Cazimi Studio. The studio offers design solutions through performance, publication and pedagogy along with the integration of spiritual care. Allegra’s work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Art Journal, BOMB Magazine, SF Chronicle, KQED and ARTFORUM. They are a Creative Capital Awardee.

Artist Bio

TEXERE is an art-based mental health app that weaves digital memorial tapestries from words, images, and soundbites about people’s losses. “Texere” is a Latin verb that means “to weave”, and is where the words “text” and “textile” originate from. In fact, the use of weaving to record human stories is 30,000 years old. When you visit TEXERE, you are invited to choose from a menu of losses that relate to your own story. You might choose the loss of sleep, the loss of respect for someone who once helped you, or the loss of one’s indigenous language. Once you select a focus, you make an anonymous entry about how that loss makes you feel. TEXERE then transforms that entry into a digital thread that is woven into a larger digital tapestry of entries from people all over the world who are grieving that same loss. Each time anyone engages in the simple ritual of making a new entry, the composition of the tapestry changes. The tapestry can be changed an infinite number of times. Through woven patterns, TEXERE is a new kind of memorial experience that provides a visual archive of how we collectively change and grow in relationship to our experiences of loss. Images of the memorial tapestries can be viewed as reminders that we are not alone in our grief processes —all from the comfort of a phone or computer. Created in collaboration with Sassafras Tech Collective with financial support from Ford Foundation Gallery, Creative Capital and California Black Voices Project. The public installation at YBCA was supported by Office of Mayor London N. Breed and the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

TEXERE was presented at the Bay Area 9 Triennial at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA, from October 6, 2023 through May 5, 2024, projected onto the facade of the building.