Events, Festivals and Exhibitions

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art shines a light on artists from the 1960s to today who have explored the transformative and subversive potential of textiles. It runs at the Barbican Art Gallery from 13 February to 29 May, 2024.

The exhibition brings together more than 100 artworks by 50 international artists who have embraced fibre and thread to tell stories that challenge power structures, transgress boundaries and reimagine the world around them.

Organised thematically, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art considers the various ways in which artists have used textiles to speak to stories of marginalisation and exclusion. It presents six themes – ‘Subversive Stitch’, ‘Fabric of Everyday Life’, ‘Borderlands’, ‘Bearing Witness’, ‘Wound and Repair’ and ‘Ancestral Threads’.

Unravel Review

There are clear similarities between Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, and Beyond Form Lines of Abstraction currently showing at the Turner Contemporary.

While the latter focuses on how female artists used new materials to explore figurative and abstract art in the post-war era, Unravel examines the way that artists have used fabrics to similar effect. What links both exhibitions is the potential power of using materials not commonly associated with fine art to push boundaries.

For instance, both exhibitions look into how materials such as textiles were used by artists behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War period.

Where Unravel perhaps goes further than Beyond Form is to investigate the politics of art. This is right at the fore of the exhibition in the opening gallery entitled Subversive Stitch taken from a phrase by Rozsika Parker in 1984. Stitching and weaving have been marginalised in terms of art but they can also be subversive, challenging the accepted social and political norms.

Tracey Ermin’s No chance (WHAT A YEAR) 1999 is an amazingly powerful work describing the year that the artist was raped as a 13-year-old girl. Zamthingia Ruivah’s textile represents the fight for justice for a woman raped and murdered in India.

Unravel examines how artists explore political elements through textiles. Some of the works are overtly political, depicting the fight for indigenous rights, and agrarian reform, or the examination of the Vietnam War. Others are less so. They push boundaries to see what lies on the other side.

Ishaan Adam’s ephemeral Prayer Clouds considers new pathways for his native South Africa in a post-Apartheid world. Louise Bourgeois’ Arch of Hysteria consisting of a body hastily stitched together takes a more internal approach – how do our psychological wounds heal. Solange Pessoa’s wonderful Hammock is a formless merging of nature and humanity where boundaries are unclear.

This is the strength of Unravel. It shows the power and the politics of art but also the possibility.

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art

It is curated by Wells Fray-Smith (Barbican), Lotte Johnson (Barbican) and Amanda Pinatih (Stedelijk), with Diego Chocano (Barbican). The advisor for the exhibition is Julia Bryan-Wilson. Architectural design is by Studio Donna van Milligen van Bielke & Ars de Vries Architecten and graphic design by Atelier Dyakova.

Where and When

At the Barbican Art Gallery from 13 February to 29 May, 2024. It will run at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 14 September 2024 to 5 January 2025.

Tickets

For £18 (standard) are on sale from here.

Book

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue designed by Atelier Dyakova. Price: £39.99.

Main image: Igshaan Adams, Gebedelswolke, 2021 – 2024.