Nicolas Moufarrege
Recognize My Sign
Queens Museum, New York

Like many outliers of the 1980s, Nicolas Moufarrege challenged the boundaries of taste and tradition. A master appropriator who came to be admired for his eccentric woven tapestries clashing pop art with classical aesthetics, Moufarrege was as much an artist of his time as he was one who transcended it. Thirty-four years after his death from AIDS in 1985, his long-overdue institutional solo “Recognize My Sign,” which debuted at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in November 2018, landed at New York’s Queens Museum.

For the itinerant Egyptian-born Lebanese artist, large embroidered panoramas made on needlepoint canvas became his métier. From his earliest works in the exhibition, such as Une Île (An Island) and Le Chemin (The Way) (both 1975), Moufarrege experimented by weaving tapestries with a combination of silk, cotton, and wool to portray abstract landscapes with perspectival depth and texture. Breathtakingly refreshing for their tonal variation and conception of spare geometric shapes, Moufarrege’s works made use of traditional craftsmanship from the beginning of his artistic career.