“In the Frottage series, I manifest my incarnational Catholic sensibility through Embodied Abstraction and coded, Queer Abstraction. Frottage has two meanings; compositions and images made by rubbing surfaces, and the erotic act of two bodies rubbing against one another. Working off of this duality, these digitally woven tapestries explore the intersection of mark making, queer erotics, and the sacred icon of Veronica. A symbol of grace, the Vera Icon is an iconophile mediation representing a direct image of God. Depicted in the Sixth Station of the Cross, St. Veronica encountered Christ in the Passion. Wiping his face with her veil she created the first Vera Icon. With Frottage, I have made my own. Beginning with cloth woven by my own hands, I made rubbings which were digitally scanned and handwoven on a computer-interfaced jacquard loom to generate the final tapestry. Textile became rubbing became textile in a self-cannibalistic system where each proceeding form was erased by the following iteration. This transubstantiation is rooted in the sensuality of touch, eroticizing the Catholic commemoration of the death of God with queer desire. “

Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. They have exhibited internationally including the Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou City, China; CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA; Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Dorksy Gallery Curatorial Projects, Long Island City, NY; Document, Chicago, IL; The Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, Asheville, NC; and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI. Public collections include the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec, Montreal, QC, CA, and the Textile Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From 2007-2011, Morabito served as a designer and weaver for Suzanne Tick – Tick Studio. Since 2013, they have collaborated with the photographer Laura Letinsky. Together Letinsky and Morabito exhibit internationally and have developed collections for Skyline Design and the Renaissance Society. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morabito is Assistant Professor, Adj. of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.