Installation view of Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, 2024, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom. Photo courtesy of the Barbican Centre.
Jeffrey Gibson and Sheila Hicks are featured in the group exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, on view at the Barbican Centre through May 26, 2024.
Since the 1960s, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has been historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have been historically undervalued within hierarchies of western art, considered a ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’ and gendered as feminine by scholars and the art market. The fifty international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider sociopolitical narratives, teasing out these entangled concerns through a stitch, a knot, a braid, through the warp and the weft. These artists defy traditional expectations of textiles, embracing abstraction or figuration to push the boundaries of the medium. They draw on its material history to reveal ideas relating to gender, labor, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Rather than dictating a chronological history of fiber art, the exhibition is organized in thematic dialogues between artists—across both generations and geographies—to explore how artists have embraced textiles to critique or push up against regimes of power. Some artists work alone with solitary, near-meditative practices, while others reflect the shared approach that the medium often invites, working with collaborators in acts of community and solidarity. Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, these artworks communicate multi-layered stories about lived experience, invoking the vital issues embedded in fiber and thread.
This exhibition is co-curated by the Barbican, London and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, where the exhibition will be on show from September 2024. To learn more, click here.