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FARMINGTON, N. Mex. — From researching historic twill patterns in museum collections to dyeing wool with Kool-Aid, Diné (Navajo) weaver and instructor Venancio Aragón interlocks research and experimentation to expand the visual and technical vocabularies of Diné weaving. Working on the Diné upright loom, Aragón is part of a generation of Diné weavers who reinterpret ancestral knowledge through experimentation, carrying the medium forward on their own terms. As he stated in our interview with him, “I am not a purist.”
Based in Farmington, New Mexico, Aragón is trained in cultural anthropology and Native American and Indigenous studies, currently teaching at Diné College, the Navajo Nation’s tribal college. Before transitioning to full-time weaving and teaching, Aragón worked as an interpretive park ranger at the Mesa Verde, Aztec Ruins, Bandelier, and Petroglyph National Monuments, where he led tours and developed public education initiatives. He was born to the Tó’aheedlíinii (The Water Flow Together People) clan and born for the Naakaii (Mexican people). His maternal grandfather is of the Tsénahabiłnii (Sleeping Rock) clan, and his paternal grandfather is of the Naakaii (Mexican people).
Aragón’s academic background deeply informs his studio practice: He spends time in institutional archives studying historic Diné textiles — rare twills, irregularly shaped weavings, and other unconventional forms that fall outside the regional styles popularized through the trading post system, including through workshops with institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His research reconsiders these standardized styles, which were shaped by White traders who dictated marketable designs and often restricted weavers’ creative autonomy. By reimagining pre-trading-post-era weaving techniques, Aragón continually colors his practice with new aesthetic and material horizons.
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Venancio Aragón, “In Defense of LGBTQ Existence” (2023), wool/mohair weft, wool warp with natural and synthetic dyes (photo Alon Koppel)
He is perhaps best known for his signature “Expanded Rainbow Aesthetic,” a tapestry style characterized by a highly complex repeating pattern with a range of color shifts as the pattern recurs. Aragón includes up to 300 distinct hues of wool in each weaving, with intricate patterns that pay visual tribute to generations of Diné weaving knowledge.
In recent years, Aragón has extended his textile practice into curatorial work and social commentary. He recently organized From the Fringes: Diné Textiles that Disrupt at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, where he is currently pursuing a master’s degree. The show proposed new frameworks for understanding Diné weaving, exhibiting historic textiles alongside contemporary works by his mother, Irveta Aragón; his Diné College students; and himself. In his recent weavings that explicitly advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, Aragón highlights Diné understandings of gender and sexuality as existing along a spectrum.
We visited Aragón’s Farmington studio last year and continued our conversation via Zoom in October, discussing weaving pedagogy, dye techniques, historic textiles, and the influence of settler economics on art. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Sháńdíín Brown and Zach Feuer: Can you walk us through how you learned to weave?
Venancio Aragón: I learned from my mother. It’s a story of discovery, because as a child, my mother wasn’t actively weaving. I didn’t know she was a weaver.
I went to school in Farmington, New Mexico, and we had a bilingual education program for Navajo students. The Navajo teachers had us do a cardboard loom project, just cardboard, acrylic yarn, cotton warp, and popsicle sticks. I took it home, and my mother said, “Let me show you how to put a design in there.” That’s when I learned she was a weaver. She’d been working as a wage laborer to support the family.
I finished my project and asked if she’d teach me to weave. By that time, my maternal grandmother, her mother, had passed, and her weaving tools were dispersed among the family. So my mom and I went around asking relatives if we could have those tools so I could learn. From closets, drawers, and chests, we reassembled my grandmother’s toolkit, and that’s when my mom started teaching me.
My earliest weavings looked like standard regional styles. It took a long time for me to develop my own voice, but it looked very different from what I do now.
SB & ZF: Could you tell us more about your mother, Irveta, and how her practice has influenced yours? Who are some other weavers you look up to?
VA: I look up to all the old weavers whose work appears in collections labeled “unknown artist.” We now frame this lack of attribution as “artist once known.” Those grandmothers wove out of necessity. Their weavings show their material conditions and their innovations using the resources they had on hand. Those are the weavers I admire most.
As for my mother, color is a big part of my work. I always say to her, “I don’t know where I got this from,” and she says, “Well, it’s part of our family too.” She told me that when she was young, my grandmother would buy old sweaters or scarves from thrift stores, unravel them, and reuse the yarn in her textiles. So my mom’s early weavings had strange colors from recycled materials. Today we call it “upcycling,” but back then it was just about making do. My mom says that’s probably where I got my color thing from.
Aragón in his studio in Farmington, New Mexico (photo Zach Feuer/Hyperallergic)
SB & ZF: Your “Expanded Rainbow Aesthetic” has become a defining feature of your work. Can you tell us how that developed?
VA: The “Expanded Rainbow Aesthetic” came from years of experimenting with both natural and synthetic dyes. My mom remembered her mother using plants for color, but she didn’t practice natural dyeing herself. So we began boiling plants and trying to recreate my grandmother’s colors. That process ignited my interest in the chemistry of dyeing.
Eventually, I had all these colors — natural and synthetic — and needed a way to order them. I looked to the natural world, to rainbows. They contain all the colors I use, so I began weaving textiles in rainbow sequences. Over time, I incorporated more and more colors, so I began using synthetics too, even grocery-store dyes like turmeric, onion skins, and Kool-Aid. That’s how the “Expanded Rainbow” was born: It was simply a need for more color.
SB & ZF: When you were an artist fellow at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, you researched historic Diné textiles and reintroduced older weaving techniques like twill into your work. How do you approach analyzing and reimagining historic methods?
VA: I look for any non-plain tapestry techniques — twill, hybrid, or two-faced weaving. The general public often doesn’t realize the variety of Navajo weaving beyond standard tapestry. These techniques show the incredible innovations of our ancestors.
At SAR, my project had two parts: researching textiles to identify unrecognized twills or hybrids, and then reconstructing or reverse-engineering them. I wrote drafts for other weavers to use. In my own work, I mix several twill types within one piece and combine them with my Expanded Rainbow Aesthetic to make the forms my own.
SB & ZF: Recently, you embarked on a research partnership with Fort Lewis College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Southern Ute Museum using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology to study textiles. Could you tell us more about that process?
VA: XRF lets us identify the elemental composition of materials. In this project, we used it to check for historic pesticide treatments on textiles, like arsenic, mercury, methyl bromide, boric acid, and formaldehyde.
It’s important because it affects how we can safely handle these works, and it impacts how Native descendants can interact with ancestral pieces. Often, we can’t touch them because of those chemicals, not because the textiles are fragile, but because they can be toxic.
Another potential use for XRF is to identify historical dye mordants, metals like iron, copper, or tin, which could tell us more about how colors were achieved. It won’t let us perfectly replicate those dyes, but it adds valuable knowledge to textile scholarship.
Aragón demonstrating his dyeing techniques (photo courtesy Venancio Aragón)
SB & ZF: Teaching is a major part of your practice. You offer weaving and dye courses at Diné College, and much of your educational work centers on Diné students rather than non-Native learners. What aspects of Navajo weaving do you think are important for non-Native people to understand, and how do you balance education with cultural protection?
VA: Most of my students are Navajo, since Diné College is the country’s oldest and largest Indigenous educational institution. Many of my colleagues teach non-Native audiences, but I’ve taken a different stance.
Our communities haven’t yet had a deep discussion about how much of our cultural knowledge should be shared outside with non-Diné people. Weaving isn’t just an art form; it carries philosophy, oral history, and spirituality. When shared without context, it risks losing its sacredness.
Knowledge isn’t an inherent right, it’s a privilege. Some people see it differently, but I believe that until we have those critical community discussions, we should be careful. After centuries of colonization, land, language, and religion taken, our art forms are among the last things truly ours. They deserve protection.
SB & ZF: Some of your recent works directly engage with LGBTQ+ identity and visibility, such as “TRANSform Hate” and “Woke Pride Flag” (both 2025). What inspired these pieces, and what has the response been like from market visitors and other artists?
VA: Those pieces are part of a larger effort to move beyond simply making beautiful things to make art with explicit messages. Historically, Navajo pictorial weaving documented change: trains, wagons, and new technologies. I wanted to capture what’s happening now: the social and political climate and the attacks on marginalized communities.
Since I already weave rainbows, it felt natural to take a more direct stance. Those works express my own political views through textile form.
As for the response, most have been positive. People thank me for using my platform to raise awareness. But some online reactions have been negative, especially to “Woke Pride Flag.” And that’s okay. Art is meant to provoke thought, even discomfort. I set the work free into the world. People can engage with it however they choose.
Venancio Aragón, “Woke Pride Flag” (2025), wool and synthetic dye (photo Alon Koppel)
SB & ZF: You recently guest-curated From the Fringes: Diné Textiles that Disrupt at Fort Lewis College’s Center of Southwest Studies, which includes works by you, your mother, and your Diné College students. What was it like to curate a weaving exhibition as a practicing weaver? Did the experience shift how you think about your own work?
VA: It reinforced what I already felt about my work. Curating at the Center for Southwest Studies was amazing. They gave me full control over selections and curatorial text.
Most weaving exhibitions I’ve seen were organized by non-Native scholars or collectors, often with unequal power dynamics. This was an opportunity to tell our story in our own voices, a decolonizing project.
I focused on what I call “aesthetic oddities,” the overlooked forms of Navajo weaving, not the usual regional typologies like Two Grey Hills or Ganado Reds. These are the unsung heroes of Navajo weaving, showing innovation and experimentation.
For me, the exhibition underscored that weaving is not a vanishing art. It’s alive and evolving through contemporary weavers and our students.
SB & ZF: We wanted to ask about your piece “Polymorphic Experimentations in Binary Cruciform” (2025). Could you talk about the ideas behind that?
VA: That piece came from thinking about binary structures in weaving and in life. Weaving is inherently binary: warp and weft, over and under. Everything is built on that dual system. But I wanted to see how far I could push that to create something that looks like it’s breaking away from a rigid binary structure.
I also think about identity, gender, and the way society frames things in binaries: male/female, good/bad, traditional/contemporary. In weaving, I can literally and metaphorically move between those opposites, blend them, or blur the boundaries.
So “Polymorphic Experimentations in Binary Cruciform” is about questioning those divides. The cross form (the “cruciform”) shows balance, intersection, and tension. It’s not about religion but about structure. It’s my way of visually asking, “What happens when opposites intersect or merge?”
Technically, that piece also experiments with different twill directions intersecting, so you see areas that reflect light differently, creating movement. It’s not just color that shifts, but structure.
Venancio Aragón, “Rainbow Reflected in Rippling Water” (2023), wool warp, wool/mohair weft, natural and synthetic dyes (photo Alon Koppel)
SB & ZF: In your label for “Journey to the Home of Spider Woman” (2024), you wrote that it references a segment of the Diné creation narratives when the Hero Twins visit the dwelling of Na’ashjé’íí Asdzáá (Spider Woman) and Na’ashjé’íí Hastiin (Spider Man). As we speak with more male weavers, we’ve noticed how often Spider Man’s role emerges alongside Spider Woman’s. Without going into winter stories and keeping in mind the cultural protection we spoke about earlier, could you share whether Spider Man has been part of your family’s teachings or your personal weaving education?
VA: Without going too deep into those narratives, I’ll say that our oral histories differ by region and community. From my understanding, both Spider Woman and Spider Man have important roles in our history, each teaching our ancestors aspects of weaving and balance.
Spider Woman’s work is described as fine, soft, and intricately detailed: thin weft, precise patterns. Spider Man’s work, on the other hand, is thicker, heavier, and stronger. This duality, male and female, shows up throughout Navajo culture: in rain, in loom parts, in symbolism.
I think that through Christianization and colonial history, some of our people have internalized the Western idea that weaving is solely women’s work. But our own creation narratives tell a different story, one where both Spider Woman and Spider Man were central to teaching weaving.
I wear spider jewelry as a way to honor both of them, the sources of our knowledge. Some weavers speak only of Spider Woman, and that’s fine, but I think it’s important to remember that our traditions have always embraced both energies and both teachers.
SB & ZF: You’ve also incorporated the Whirling Log motif in your weavings. Could you talk about your decision to use this symbol and how you navigated presenting it in From the Fringes, commonly misinterpreted by settlers as swastikas?
VA. In From the Fringes, within the section Pictorial Narration, there are several works, some from the collection and one of my own, that feature the Whirling Log symbol. I wrote a short description in the exhibition about its meaning to Navajo people and why it nearly disappeared after World War II.
That disappearance speaks to the power of symbols and how their meanings shift across time. After WWII, Nazi propaganda co-opted the swastika, using it to promote their ideology of Aryan supremacy. In the US, that symbol became linked to fascism and hate, and many Navajo weavers stopped using [the Whirling Log].
Today, some of us are reclaiming it and educating the public about its original meanings: peace, prosperity, movement, and blessings. Versions of the Whirling Log exist in many cultures worldwide, often with positive connotations.
Years ago, I entered a weaving featuring the Whirling Log in the Crownpoint Rug Auction. I noticed during the auction that my piece never came up for auction. When I asked afterward, one of the organizers said they had decided not to show it because the symbol was “too controversial.” The older weavers standing nearby, mostly women, responded, “That’s our symbol. It means good things. Why would you associate it with something else?”
That moment showed how layered and contested the symbol’s meanings have become. The more we bring it back and talk about it, the more we can reclaim its original purpose, something positive and powerful, rather than letting it remain tied only to Nazi ideology.
An untitled work by Aragón that features the Whirling Log symbol (photo courtesy Venancio Aragón)
SB & ZF: In the From the Fringes curatorial statement, you write: “Diné culture and economy radically changed during the period of American expansionism and settler colonialism in the 1860s,” noting how “rugs” were foreign concepts before that time. Could you talk about your approach to telling these histories of trade, exploitation, and adaptation through your weaving and writing? Does this connect to your earlier experience as an interpretive ranger for the National Park Service?
VA: My work with the National Park Service, my research, my education, and my lived experience as Diné all shape the way I approach these histories.
We often hear the phrase “history is written by the victors.” Decolonization, for me, is about those of us who’ve been marginalized or colonized taking up the pen, writing our own lived experiences, and challenging how history has been told.
In the context of weaving, I grew up reading accounts by trading post owners who were often credited with “saving” Navajo weaving by opening off-reservation markets. But those stories were told from their point of view. The voices of the Navajo weavers were largely left out.
When I speak with my elders about their experiences with the trading posts, what I hear is different. The common thread is economic exploitation and unequal power relationships.
In From the Fringes, I wanted to bring those stories forward and untangle the myths to present Indigenous counter-narratives. Only by including these voices can we reach a fuller understanding of the past and how it continues to shape our present.
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Become a member Tagged: Diné, Textile Art, weaving
Sháńdíín Brown
Sháńdíín Brown is a curator, creative, and citizen of the Navajo Nation from Arizona. She studies multitemporal Native American art and fashion at Yale University. Previously, she was the Assistant... More by Sháńdíín Brown
Zach Feuer
Zach Feuer is an arts worker based in Upstate New York and co-founder of Forge Project and the New Art Dealers Alliance. Previously, he directed the sculpture park at Art Omi and operated Zach Feuer Gallery... More by Zach Feuer
