Division, 2021

Tenesh Webber  

Tenesh Webber is a Canadian abstract artist, her work explores and challenges traditional black and white photography. She lives in New Jersey and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Webber studied with Canadian artists like Ian Wallace and Eldon Garnet, who were among the first innovators in experimental photography at the Art Faculty and Design Emily Carr in Vancouver. She graduated from the OCAD University in Toronto.

Her photos are influenced by the work of a long series of abstract artists. These mainly include the bold drawings of stick painting by Richard Serra, geometric assemblies of Barry Le Va and the fine minimal process of Agnès Martin. Her work is in the same lines of "rayographers", or photo-grams, set up by artists such as Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Based on these works of artists, Webber was able to develop a a unique approach and create her own photo-grams, she includes elements of sculpture and drawing and of course counts on chance.

During the last 25 years, Tenesh Webber has been working on large-scale or wall-sized photos, handling photos in a darkroom, or manipulating the negatives in the camera. Webber's process begins with sketches, in which she develops ideas of images. She then creates two-dimensional objects with a sewing thread, or a marker on plexiglass.

Jane Ursula Harris, commissioner/writer wrote about the artist: "Thanks to the various means which brings out repeated variations, Webber's minimalist forms reveal infinite possibilities of photo gram which can be used not only as the means but also the process. Like the poetic constraint of painted grids by Agnès Martin, these abstract images in black and white, designed through layers of thread, hum with the subtle energy which can only be provided through hand gestures".

Webber's work is part of public and private collections, including the ones in the Brooklyn Museum and Barclays Bank, New York. She received several grants and awards for her work, including two grants from the Art Council in Canada, several grants from Artist's Space, New York... Webber has exhibited her work around the country, but has also done individual and collective exhibitions in Europe.