Melissa Cody’s textile art boldly remixes motifs from Indigenous myths, popular culture, and her own life. Born in Arizona and raised in the Navajo tradition, the Navajo/Diné artist combines folk textile techniques with digital explorations in generating patterns and weaves. With her first US solo exhibition, Webbed Skies, currently at MoMA PS1, she intentionally ruptures traditional symmetries, creating beauty out of disorder. In this way, she calls into question canonical Euro-American aesthetic ideals of balance and order. More broadly, the glitches in the show’s more than 20 works speak to culture — and cultural difference — as a complex network of interconnections and disruptions, while drawing viewers’ attention to Cody’s personal examinations of heritage and belonging.
Cody’s vast lexicon of cultural references ranges from mythical figures to the bland corporate toys she had as a child. Spider Woman, in “Spider Woman Greets the Dawn” (2013), and the arched violet bands in “Under Cover of Webbed Skies” (2021) evoke a mythical mountain landscape, while “I Am Navajo Barbie” (2012) centers the sacred figure Ye’ii, woven in a bright, simplified pattern, which in its bare rendering of a robot or mascot figure resembles children’s drawings and strikingly captures a childlike sense of yearning within play.
In “Germantown Sampler” (2011), Cody draws on the luminous, high-contrast patterning of the Germantown Revival, a Navajo weaving tradition developed after a period of forced migrations and mass imprisonment known as the Long Walk (1863–68). In her “sampler,” Cody breaks up the weave’s symmetry by playing with color, switching from a black/orange contrast to a subtler gradation of blue and green, jettisoning the equilibrium of her visual inspiration. For “White Out” (2012), she leaves a large rectangle on the left side blank, but for a slim remnant of the weave that fills the work’s entire right side. In this way, Cody’s deliberately helter-skelter patterning subverts both perceptual expectations and what it means to preserve artistic traditions.
Disruptions take on more personal meanings elsewhere in the show, particularly in works dedicated to Cody’s father, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. A trio of works, “Deep Brain Stimulation” (2011), “Dopamine Regression” (2010), and “Coagulation” (2010), poignantly reflect the illness and its treatment. In the first, pulsating bands of color that resemble radial waves change abruptly from cold to warm and back to cold, perhaps to underline the stark effects of neurotransmitters on the brain. In “Coagulation,” the red color “bleeds” into the symmetrical composition, “coagulating” within the neat edges separating it from the geometric weave, while “Dopamine Regression” represents neuroscience as a study of arcane patterns — here, dense jagged lines and jumbled designs — powerfully conveying the feeling of a person straining to cut through the mental noise. In these works, as in the entire show, Cody demonstrates that traditional techniques and motifs are not static, but are dynamic bearers of emotional weight.
Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies continues at MoMA PS1 (22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens) through September 9. The exhibition was organized by Museu de arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and MoMA PS1, and curated by MASP’s Isabella Rjeille and MoMA PS1’s Ruba Katrib.
