UNRAVEL - The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL
14.09.2024 – 05.01.2025

In Unravel, artists from around the world present extraordinary artworks, from large-scale, colorful and expressive installations, to delicate and intimate pieces about love, resilience, power, and resistance. The group show features over a hundred works by 45 artists, including such famous names as Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks, and Tracey Emin, but also younger artists.

 

Textiles are the new way to tell stories in art

Textiles are a vital part of everyday life. They cover and protect you, stimulate your senses, trigger memories, represent your tastes and beliefs. Textiles have always been an under-examined medium in art history, but have recently been rediscovered by artists as a way to tell tales of love, resilience, power, and resistance. The colorful and extraordinary artworks in the group exhibition Unravel are radical in both form and content, showcasing a wide range of forms, scales, techniques, and perspectives. Some draw on age-old techniques, while others utilize new and experimental processes. Each of these artists uses fabric and thread to tell their personal histories, which also speak to current socio-political themes.

 

The exhibition explores the role of textiles in art through six themes

Subversive Stitch touches on resistance to textiles as ‘women’s work,’ Fabric of Everyday Life is about personal stories and lived experiences. Borderlands shows works that deal with physical and invisible boundaries, while Bearing Witness features socio-political commentary. Wound and Repair carries textiles as a restorative and healing medium and Ancestral Threads reveals the lives and techniques of ancestors and alternative knowledge systems through textiles.

 

The Stedelijk has a long history with textiles

It has collected works of textile art since 1930. In the 1960s and 1970s, artworks gradually became more sculptural, and began to address socio-political themes. Today, textiles are experiencing a remarkable resurgence. The work of pioneers such as Sheila Hicks and Magdalena Abakanowicz is being reappraised, and many young creators are harnessing the medium to tell stories. Unravel shows that contemporary artists feel free to express themselves in any medium they like, and that textiles add an extra dimension, both in terms of content and visual experience. Unravel features 9 works from the Stedelijk’s collection, including recent acquisitions.

 

Artists

Pacita Abad, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Igshaan Adams, Mounira Al Solh, Ghada Amer, Arpilleristas, Mercedes Azpilicueta, Kevin Beasley, Sanford Biggers, Louise Bourgeois, Diedrick Brackens, Jagoda Buić, Margarita Cabrera, Feliciano Centurión, Judy Chicago, Myrlande Constant, Cian Dayrit, Tracey Emin, Gee’s Bend / Lorraine Pettway, Jeffrey Gibson, Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic, Harmony Hammond, Sheila Hicks, Nicholas Hlobo, Kimsooja, José Leonilson, Tau Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Teresa Margolles, Georgina Maxim, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Violeta Parra, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, Faith Ringgold, LJ Roberts, Zamthingla Ruivah, Hannah Ryggen, Tschabalala Self, Angela Su, Lenore Tawney, Cecilia Vicuña, T. Vinoja, Yee I-Lann, Billie Zangewa, Sarah Zapata

 

More information: www.stedelijk.nl