Hellen Ascoli (Guatemala/United States) is a weaver, translator and educator whose practice explores how knowledge is produced through language and tools. Working with the back-strap loom, she seeks to destabilise preconceived notions of knowledge production through weaving, object making, pedagogical prompts, installation and writing. Her practice is informed by her experience of migration and the relationships formed through teaching and providing language services to migrant youth.
During her residency at Delfina Foundation, Ascoli will continue to explore the experience of existing in-between places, drawing on her relationships with migrant youth and their experiences of leaving home and resettling. Working with fragmented textual translations, detached forms of weaving and random entanglements, she will consider how new iterations of histories might be contained within the situated history of the back-strap loom, while re-establishing the fraught connection between the two countries she calls home.
Recent exhibitions include Accidental Geographies at Proyectos Ultravioleta (2026); The World Upside Down at ISCP (International Studio and Curatorial Program) (2025); To Carry at the 16th Sharjah Biennial (2025); Flow States at La Trienal, Museo del Barrio (2024); and Cien Tierras at La Nueva Fábrica / Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati (2023–2021).
Her publications include Poch’onïk (2024), co-written with Negma Coy and Luisa González-Reiche; Biografía Tejida (2023), co-written with Negma Coy and Luisa González-Reiche; and work included in Vitamin TX (Phaidon, 2024).
Ascoli was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala and is currently based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
With support from:
Jorge M. Pérez Collection and El Espacio 23
Artist’s website
Tags
Please note all artist-in-residence biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit the artist’s website.