Unravel: The Power of Textiles in Art

There’s a moment many of us have shared – a quiet moment spent lingering over our grandmother’s woven blanket… or her cardigan, her tattered old rug. Within that moment, a subtle yet poignant feeling often settles. Is it nostalgia, or perhaps a sense of comfort in knowing that her hands made it, sensing how she imbued them with the essence of her. As fingertips trace over its weathered surface, it’s both tender and remarkable to consider that beyond sentimentality, there may lie a deeper undercurrent.

Behind every frayed edge and faded pattern, there may well lie the memories of generations of women and men who wielded textiles as a means of expression and defiance. Perhaps your grandmother was one of those women, and perhaps it’s this subtle recognition of textiles’ inherent radicalism that resonates within us. And it’s this duality, this juxtaposition of the mundane and the extraordinary, that forms the heart of Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art.

This exhibition beckons us to unravel the underexamined yet potent medium of textiles in art history and contemporary practice. This expansive showcase at the Barbican https://www.barbican.org.uk/ in London displays over a hundred artworks by fifty international practitioners, spanning from the 1960s to today. These artists, including Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Cecilia Vicuña, Violeta Parra, Tschabalala Self, Ghada Amer, or Sheila Hicks, among others, have plumbed the depths of textiles, exploring their latent potential to disrupt norms and provoke thoughts, from themes of power, gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade. The artworks encompass a wide range of forms, scales and techniques, yet the fundamental inquiry into power persists: who holds it, and how can it be challenged and reclaimed. They speak stories of marginalisation and exclusion, emancipatory joy and transcendence.

Until May 26th, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art will adorn the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Following this showcase, the exhibition will journey to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it will be on display from September 2024 to the 5th of January 2025.

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Installation view © Jemima Yong / Barbican Art Gallery

Threads of Defiance