Ollin Ramirez

“Although I do not know what it means, or why I should keep coming back to it, I can remember it clearly (for some reason it must be important) – the first time I wove. Though it wasn’t my first time manipulating strings, it awoke something deep within the fibers of my essence. I felt like a spider. I felt beautiful. I felt feminine.” Ollin Ramirez

 

Ollin Ramirez’s ancestors were spiders as well. They were weavers, some of the first to create with natural fibers. La naturaleza fed, clothed, and informed their ancestors. Plants were used medicinally to heal their people, and they provided the materials needed to clothe and protect. Textiles felt natural and familiar. Ramirez’s materials are their ancestors. They are Ramirez’s teacher, friend, and mother. Ramirez’s work has provided them with the tools to love and care for themself. Textiles and painting has given them the language to merge their ancestral past to their modern identity.

 

Ollin Ramirez is a multi-disciplinary artist based in San Francisco, exploring their personal and familial identity, through painting and textiles, to create intimate windows into their emotional landscape. The work documents the networks of their Salvadoran community in order to begin to archive an authentic history of home and identity. Beginning as a painter, Ramirez soon found textiles as another way to connect with their ancestral roots and family.