2024
Antonietta Grassi
Antonietta Grassi’s art celebrates women at the intersection of textiles and computer coding
2024
Antonietta Grassi’s art celebrates women at the intersection of textiles and computer coding
Since she was three, Antionetta Grassi was “always drawing,” says the Montreal-based artist, whose work speaks to multiple histories, textiles, and the pioneering role of women in technology.
The only Canadian among the 2024 recipients of the Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts, Ms. Grassi grew up visiting the many fabric stores in Montreal and helping her Italian mother make clothes. Her passion for art and design led her to postsecondary studies in textiles and clothing design, not realizing that a career as a full-time artist was an option.
“I didn’t really know you could be an artist,” she recalls. “The idea of going to art school wasn’t even on my radar.” But while studying applied arts, she continued drawing and painting. When she started working in the textile industry in Montreal, she began taking painting and drawing classes at Concordia University at night.
“Essentially, I did my Bachelor of Fine Arts mostly part-time until the final year, when I sort of made the transition and said, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do.’”
That transition included a move into academia; she is currently a professor in visual arts at Dawson College, where her passion for textiles remains an important part of her work.
“I would go into these small towns in Northern Quebec and Ontario to see the production mills and all the looms,” she recalls of her early career in textiles. The loom came to influence her art.
“Looms were basically the inspiration for the first computers,” she says. “The loom was what inspired Charles Babbage, who worked on the Analytical Engine, which would be considered the first computer, in the 19th century — because the looms were programmed with punch cards.”
Ms. Grassi’s current work explores those connections between textiles and computer coding. “And in that story, there’s also the forgotten story of women’s involvement. The first coders were women, because of the link to textiles. Ada Lovelace was one of the first coders. So, there are forgotten stories about women and their important role in the history, both of textiles and computer coding, and also in art history.”
The artist says winning the Guggenheim Fellowship is a “huge validation” of her work.
“The visual artists who have gotten it, I have enormous respect for them,” she says. “It’s great to be part of that group.”
