The artist’s first international solo exhibition, Warped Terrain draws on six years of research into the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Mexico: specifically the entanglement between Texas and Mexico, agriculture, labor, and the Texas prison system. Engaging the practice of autoethnography, Luna takes a multidisciplinary approach to material and research through personal family history. Their late father and his six siblings were the children of migrant laborers from Mexico and grew up picking cotton and okra as tenant farmers through Navarro County, Texas. Later in his life, the artist’s father returned to working the fields but while incarcerated in state prison. Texas’ exploitation of prisoners as free and cheap labor has greatly influenced the carceral system that exists in the United States today, with textiles being one of the industries ensnared in prison production. For example, the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville began a prison mill that between 1861 and 1863 alone, churned out more than two million yards of

cotton and woolen fabrics.

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In Warped Terrain, landscape and weaving are used as a metaphor, as well as material investigation of these sites, documents, and records. Central to the exhibition is a video in which the viewer is brought through personal archives, footage, and research mediated by woven patterns. Created by a process that the artist calls the “4-dimensional loom”, the time-based work is constructed in the simulation software Autodesk Maya. Luna uses a method to extrude flat shapes along a curved path to create a tube-like structure that acts as digital threads. These threads, along with the grid software interface are used to generate woven patterns.

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Located at the entrance of the gallery and hanging parallel to the video projection, is a large-scale weaving made from extension cords, rubber cables, and hand-blown glass beads. This tapestry provides the electrical power for the video projection, emphasizing

that the digital realm is already always connected with the material.

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Citations: Huntsville State Prison, known as Huntsville State Prison, Texas’s flagship penitentiary

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Acknowledgements: Cielo Saucedo, animation ...? Erin McAleavy, weaving and tapestry fabrication support Risa Recio, glassblown beads

This project is made possible, in part, with funds from the Media Arts Assistance Fund, a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.