Textile art is a global sensation. As the traditional art-or-craft barriers are toppled by artists and collectors, textile art, which can include weaving, crochet, loose thread, carpets, hand and machine stitch and more, is in the lead. Institutions within the arts and culture continue to take note and comment on the advancement of textile art, its growing popularity in exhibitions and museums since the 1960s and its eminence in the past several years.
Profane and bursting with eccentricity, splendour even distress, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is strikingly unwarranted and otherwise tranquil and cloistered. It is also filled with stories and materiality, tenderness and violence. This fantastic exhibition twists and weaves the subtle and the frenzied, the colourful and melancholic. The group show features over a hundred works by 47 artists (including duos), together with famous names such as Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin as well as younger artists.
This extraordinary and meticulously curated exhibition is delightful in its unfolding of the significance of textiles presented in six enthralling themes – Subversive Stitch, Fabric of Everyday Life, Borderlands, Bearing Witness, Wound and Repair and Ancestral Threads– collectively these subject matters enlighten the assorted roles of textiles in aesthetic practices through expression, endurance and optimism.
Subversive Stitch presents works that encounter the dualistic ideas and notions of gender and sexuality. Fabric of Everyday Life is about intimate tales and narratives. Borderlands show a variety of work that cope with tangible and intangible boundaries. Bearing Witness brings together artists who employ textiles to oppose political injustices and structures of brutality. Wound and Repair carries textiles as a restorative and therapeutic medium. The final section of the exhibition is titled Ancestral Threads, which incorporates works fashioned to enthuse a sense of sanguinity and relinking with ancestral practices.
During a time of extreme production and consumerism, with the imminence of digital, the painstaking handmade object has become a luxury. Textiles are part of all of our lives; we all experience textiles every day, and they are familiar and essential. The time taken to stitch or weave is a comforting counterbalance to our rushed lives, soothing our hyperactive and chaotic minds.
The primary aspiration of Unravel is to highlight and support the importance of textile art within contemporary and historical dialogues. The exhibition pursued to accentuate textiles as an effective medium for dense narratives, identity, and socio-political encounters.
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art – Jan 5th 2025, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
