Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art was an exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre in early 2024 that brought together 50 international artists who challenge power structures through the textiles medium.

Textiles cover and protect us, engage our senses, trigger our memories, represent our beliefs, hold our stories. We are wrapped in cloth when we’re born and enshrouded in it when we die.

As an artistic medium, textiles can speak to the joys and pains of being human, as well as the larger structures and systems that shape our world.

This major group exhibition was split into thematic sections: Subversive Stitch; Fabric of Everyday Life; Borderlands; Bearing Witness; Wound and Repair; and Ancestral Threads.

I visited early on after opening, but stalled in sharing my thoughts and photos of the works, simply so that I wasn’t adding to the noise — and additionally to respect the artists who had requested their works be withdrawn in solidarity with palestine. If you happened to open this link and then visit the exhibition, perhaps you would also have my reflections on your mind, rather than something less open-minded. This article shares stories of the works from each section for context, along with overall thoughts. It’s a long one, stick with it.

Participating artists were:

Magdalena Abakanowicz (Poland), Igshaan Adams (South Africa), Ghada Amer (Egypt/France), Arpilleristas (Chile), Mercedes Azpilicueta (Argentina),  Kevin Beasley (USA), Sanford Biggers (USA), Louise Bourgeois (France / USA), Jagoda Buić (Croatia), Margarita Cabrera (Mexico / USA), Feliciano Centurión (Paraguay), Judy Chicago (USA), Myrlande Constant (Haiti), Tracey Emin (UK), Jeffrey Gibson (USA), Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic (The Netherlands / Panama and The Netherlands / Yugoslavia), Harmony Hammond (USA),  Sheila Hicks (USA), Nicholas Hlobo (South Africa), Yee I-Lann (Malaysia), Kimsooja (South Korea), Acaye Kerunen (Uganda), José Leonilson (Brazil), Tau Lewis (Canada), Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana), Teresa Margolles (Mexico), Georgina Maxim (Zimbabwe), Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (Poland), Mrinalini Mukherjee (India), Violeta Parra (Chile), Solange Pessoa (Brazil), Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín (Guatemala), Faith Ringgold (USA), LJ Roberts (USA), Zamthingla Ruivah (India), Hannah Ryggen (Norway), Tschabalala Self (USA), Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (UK), Angela Su (Hong Kong), Lenore Tawney (USA), T. Vinoja (Sri Lanka), Cecilia Vicuña (Chile), Billie Zangewa (Malawi / South Africa), and Sarah Zapata (Peru / USA).

Works by the following artists were withdrawn during the show as an act of solidarity with Palestine in response to the Barbican’s decision not to host the London Review of Books (LRB) Winter Lecture Series. You can read Barbican’s statement on that here.

Pacita Abad (The Philippines/USA), Yto Barrada (Morocco), Diedrick Brackens (USA), Cian Dayrit (The Philippines), Loretta Pettway (Gee’s Bend) (USA), and Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon).

Textiles.

Exhibition guide text:

“Textiles are vital to our lives. We’re swaddled in them when we’re born, we wrap our bodies in them every day and we’re shrouded in them when we die. What does it mean to imagine a needled, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?

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 considered ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’, gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market. The 50 international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider socio-political 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, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade. Rather than dictating a chronological history of fibre art, the exhibition is organised 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 fibre and thread.”

Images: The exhibition viewed from the mezzanine showing large-scale works from — 1. Cecilia Vicuña (top) and Sarah Zapata (bottom); 2. Jagoda Buić (right) and Mrinalini Mukherjee (left); 3. Jeffrey Gibson.

Subversive stitch.

Stitching can be a subversive act; thread can work as a language to challenge fixed ideas and voice free expression. Across many cultures, textile-based art has been marginalised — deemed inferior as a domestic or ‘craft’ practice within a hierarchy of artistic value and framed as feminine through a sexist lens. Women, men and nonbinary artists have both resisted and reclaimed these limiting approaches to the medium, questioning gendered and value-based binaries and using the act of stitching as a radical practice.

The phrase ‘subversive stitch’ is borrowed from art historian Rozsika Parker’s 1984 book of the same name, in which she unpacked how textiles have been dismissed as ‘women’s work’ and how women have pushed back against these associations and harnessed their potential for subversion and resistance. Expanding on these ideas from a contemporary perspective, this section gathers artists of multiple generations and genders in dialogue, each responding to specific socio-cultural contexts.

Nicholas Hlobo: Babelana ngentloko, 2017 — the negative and ‘craft’ associations with textiles is what drew this artist to using leather and ribbon as their medium. As a gay man of Xhosa heritage in South Africa, the suturing stitch explores the constant revision of colonisation, the pain and the healing. It was a large-scale work opening this section, looking fairly delicate with the stitching but also vast and sturdy.

Ghada Amer: Pink Landscape - RGFA, 2007 — disallowed from taking a painting course at art school due to being a woman, Amer turned to embroidery to challenge the traditionally masculine overtones of painting. Refusing stereotypes of women in art as defined by the male gaze, Amer often presents naked women in her pieces, and here a woman is depicted masturbating, though partially obscured by the vertical and horizontal ‘drips’. Again, it appeared soft and delicate until you recognised the narrative.

Tracey Emin: No chance (WHAT A YEAR), 1999 — the hand-stitched appliqué quilt utilises textiles with political undertones to tell the story of being a thirteen-year old girl in 1977 having experienced rape. Quilts to me always feel comforting, no matter the message, and as with all the works in this section, that feels part of the point; they are subversive, unexpected.

Judy Chicago: Birth Tear/Tear, 1982 — the Birth Project (1980-85) was a collaboration with all sorts of crafty women to highlight not only the act of childbirth, but to bring equality between needle techniques that women have used for centuries with the celebrated brushstroke of male painters. This work was embroidered by Jane Gaddie Thompson who created the gradiated needlepoint using her own devised technique. Because of the red hues and of the plushiness, it does come across as womb-like to me.

Images: 1. Nicholas Hlobo; 2. Ghada Amer; 3. Tracey Emin; 4. Judy Chicago.

Mounira Al Solh: Paper Speakers, 2020-21 — scraps of fabric are stitched together to depict a woman speaking into a makeshift megaphone, a response to the 2015 Lebanon protests that sparked a revolution. Here Al Solh pays tribute to the role of women in the revolution, and uses a domestic craft to highlight how women use embroidery as economic support for their families.

Feliciano Centurión: various appliquéd works — censorship and fear of repercussions under right-wing dictatorships of Argentina and Paraguay led many artists to write messages in their work cryptically. Centurión turned to modest materials to embrace a simple aesthetic, while turning to ‘feminine craft’ in order to live out what he never could participate in as a queer boy in Paraguay. I personally appreciated the size of these, with heavy borders as if they are still blankets.

LJ Roberts: Frederick Weston, 2018 — these intimate embroideries give visibility to the lives and activism of Roberts’ friends and family, linking the debasement of needlework with the underrepresentation of queer people and their politics. The back is just as important as the front.

Images: 1. Mounira Al Solh; 2. Feliciano Centurión; 3-4. LJ Roberts (front and back).

Fabric of Everyday Life.

Textiles are part of our everyday routines — they are in close contact with our bodies and our homes, they are used, felt, touched and seen. As such, the material is invested with personal narratives, making it uniquely suited to communicate with the intricacies and complexities of lived experience. Embedded in these fabrics are stories ranging from love and labour to resilience and survival.

In this room, artists use textiles that have had a previous life as clothing belonging to members of their immediate communities. Working from the 1960s, Loretta Pettway used old workers’ clothes to construct quilts, while Sheila Hicks in the 1990s and Małgorzta Mirga-Tas in recent years re-used clothes worn by friends and loved ones. Survival is central to Sanford Biggers’ work, who uses antique quilts to explore how they may have been the key to enslaved people’s freedom.

In the next room, artists use textiles and textile processes to reflect on their everyday experiences, often embracing the intimacy of the fabrics to represent their personal politics. In the 1990s, Faith Ringgold used quilts as a base for narrative storytelling, while Pacita Abad — whose work Ringgold admired — gave visibility to the humanity of immigrant women. Today, Tschabalala Self and Billie Zangewa show social and domestic spaces as sites of personal and political significance.

Loretta Pettway: Log cabin - single block ‘Courthouse Steps’ c. 1980 and Two-sided work clothes quilt c. 1960 — these works were removed at the request of the artist to show solidarity with Palestine, following Barbicans’ withdrawal from hosting the London Review of Books Winter Lecture Series. A further four works from across the exhibition were also withdrawn within a couple weeks of the exhibition opening.

Sanford Biggers: Sweven, 2022 — the pre-existing quilt patterns i.e. the more traditional ones, are used as the first layer in a person’s behaviour, with his second abstract quilting layer acting as an intervention. It draws on the history of quilts as a way to signpost routes for enslaved freedom seekers, and of ‘codeswitching’, where people portray behaviours depending on their context. These layers offer an optical illusion, so you’re unsure what you’re looking at or even where to look. It was very complex.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: from the series Out of Egypt, 2021 — found fabrics are stitched into vibrant complex appliqués that tell the story of Roma people, revealing snapshots of everyday life such as washing. Mirga-Tas resists prior artworks that perpetuated negative stereotypes of Roma folk, by instead showing women as a community. It’s very finely-detailed, from the cards to the faces, showing the intricacies we take for granted in our everyday life.

Sheila Hicks: Family treasures, 1993 — 64 items of clothing from Hicks’ close friends and family members were wrapped up in bundles so creating sculptures from the everyday textiles we hold most dear. They have a similar vibe to the bottari bundles of Kimsooja (below), but of course, these are harder to open. I did feel sad that those people lost their beloved textile items!

Images: 1. Information plaque stating that two works from Loretta Pettway were withdrawn from the exhibition at the request of the artists; 2. Sanford Biggers; 3. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas; 4. Sheila Hicks.

Tschabalala Self: Koco at the bodega, 2017 — to Self, the neighbourhood bodega acts as ‘architectural glue, holding together a street corner’ but in communities that are threatened with rapid gentrification (such as Harlem), these are becoming more integral. The mixed-media textile was actually quite confronting in its distortion and use of colour, and makes me imagine the busy-ness of such a community hub.

Pacita Abad: From Doro Wat to Sushi and Chicken Wings and Tings, 1991 — trapunto is a method of quilting involving padded fabric hand-stitched together to create high relief patterned surfaces. Abad uses this technique alongside paint to create essentially a soft painting. I was most drawn to the markmaking of the back, stark lines against a white background still showing a significant amount of detail.

Billie Zangewa: Angelina Rising, 2012 (and Midnight Aura, 2012) — Zangewa references the colonial history of trading Dutch wax print cotton textiles in West and Central Africa by highlighting two Vlisco patterns named after women in these works, though countering this state of productivity and commodification with depictions of herself at rest. Angelina Rising was particularly beautiful in terms of detailed appliqué of the luscious silk fabrics.

Faith Ringgold: Tar Beach 2, 1990-2 — this is a silkscreen ‘story quilt’ depicting a fictional story, and held a lot of detail. Even without the text (how intricate!), the viewer can surmise the context of the story.

Images: 1. Tschabalala Self; 2. Pacita Abad (back of work); 3. Billie Zangewa; 4. Faith Ringgold.

Borderlands.

A ‘borderland’, according to the scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa, is a ‘vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary’. Borderlands are spaces where two or more cultures meet, where different social classes encounter each other, where people of different races inhabit the same locales.

The artists in this section move beyond a border being a boundary that separates ‘us’ from ‘them’. Instead, they ask how borderlands — as emotionally charged spcaes — might be sites for profound creativity. In what ways can the language of cartography and the aesthetics of borders be appropriated to subvert power? And what happens when borders are transgressed? Through varied textile practices, the artists Igshaan Adams, Cian Darit, T. Vinoja, Margarita Cabrera and Kimsooja try to understand, reject, embrace, keep alive or question borders, but above all they attempt to transcend them to find a new way of being.

Igshaan Adams: “This installation by Igshaan Adams grows out of his expanded practice of weaving and his exporation of so-called ‘desire lines’ in post-Apartheid South Africa, the informal pathways that are created over time through footfall, often acting as shortcuts. He understands these lines as ‘symbolic of a collective act of resistance by a community who have historically been segregated and marginalised through spatial planning. Intentionally or not, these pathways remain symbolic of carving out one’s own path, collectively or individually’.” [words from the exhibition text]

Prayer Clouds, 2021-23 — delicate chaotic wire clouds evoke a sensation of lightness though full of stuff.

Heideveld, 2021 — a dramatic land mass-esque wall installation that wove together chains.

Paypackets still growing on the vines, 2022 — super intricate chaotic weaving of ropes, braids, wire and ribbons with shells, bone beads, precious stone charms.

With the latter two I spent a good amount of time getting up close and moving away to hep get a sense of the labour involved here. Incredibly fiddly, needing a lot of patience to work with less malleable weaving materials. I appreciated that they essentially told different stories depending on how close you were to them; witnessing the desire lines from afar, yet all the possible pathways when up close.

Images: Igshaan Adams — 1. Prayer Clouds; 2-3. Heideveld; 4-5. Paypackets still growing on the vines.

T. Vinoja: The Day, 2021 and Bunker & Border, 2021 — Vinoja was born into a settlement outside the war-torn capital of Sri Lanka, Jaffna, where she witnessed first-hand the effects of conflict. Using the stitch as ‘reparative sutures’ and the cloth as bandages and shelter, these seemingly playful hand-embroideries are in fact maps of memories from her time in bunkers, borders, excavation routes and burial pits. I was frankly taken with these works; they are my ideal embroidery. Organic freehand, pastel shades, soft fluid shapes, visible markmaking on the back. Though destruction and devastation could be found if you stared and looked long enough, I find them liberating.

Images: T. Vinoja — 1-4. The Day (front far away, back far away, front detail, back detail); 5. Bunker & Border.

Kimsooja: Bottari, 2018 — preloved bedcovers and clothes are used to make these traditional Korean bundles that transport everyday objects. Bright bedspreads traditionally celebrate newlyweds, though bottari often evoke images of displacement and famine. For Kimsooja, bottari symbolise movement, and yet here they appear heavy and static.

Margarita Cabrera: Space in Between (series), 2016 — US-Mexico migratory politics are explored in this series of textile cactus sculptures made using US Border Patrol uniforms. Spanish-speaking communities were taught Otomí embroidery to collaboratively stitch the motifs of these works, as an attempt to maintain cultural traditions from Mexico while in the US. The stitching portrayed phrases such as ‘solidaridad’ along with sweet suns and flowers, and even though it was a hard issue to be tackling with textiles, felt that it was playfully done to engage the ‘softer’ outcomes of such divisions, like that of community and shared culture.

Images: 1. Kimsooja (and Igshaan Adams in the background); 2. Kimsooja; 3. Margarita Cabrera; 4. Borderlands room view showing Margarita Cabrera, Cian Dayrit and T. Vinoja.

Cian Dayrit: Valley of Dispossession, 2021 and Promised Land, 2018 — these stunning embroidered maps, made in collaboration with Henry Caceres, show displacement and extraction, two challenges experienced by local communities in the Philippines. Dayrit held workshops to inform understanding of what was going on, and included QR codes on the “maps” that open onto videos showing reports and data from human rights groups working in the region. Valley of Dispossession looks to the destruction of extraction, which particularly beguiled me due to how many of the commodity crops depicted are also textile fibres (banana, pineapple, rubber, and now also sugar cane for bioplastics). Yuta Nagi Panaad (Promised Land) focuses on land degraded by multinational corporations.

Images: Cian Dayrit — 1-2: Yuta Nagi Panaad (Promised Land) main and detail; 3-4: Valley of Dispossession main and detail.

Bearing witness.

Textiles can communicate through touch. They are durable and malleable, and therefore capable of being circulated. They can be folded up and transported across borders or worn ceremonially and in protest. The act of weaving, as a contemplative and slow medium, can create spaces for collectivity, memory and grief.

Turning to textile to document or protest political violence has a long history. The Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the battles leading up to the Norman Conquest of England, for example, dates back to the eleventh century. The green handkerchiefs emblematic of the fight for fair abortion laws in Argentina are one of many examples of textiles playing important roles in marches and demonstrations against state power today.

This section gather arpilleristas (anonymous women artists from Chile), Teresa Margolles, Violetta Parra, Hannah Ryggen and Zamthingla Ruivah, artists and makers from disparate geographical, cultural and temporal contexts, who mobilise textiles to commemorate victims of oppression and speak back to power.

Zamthingla Ruivah: Luingamla Kashan, 1990-ongoing — an important context that I want to depict in full, so from the exhibition text: “In 1986 a young woman in Northern India named Luingamla, a friend of the artist, was murdered by army officers who attempted to rape her. The officers walked free due to a law, a remnant of British colonial rule, that meant that armed forces were immune from being tried in civil courts”. This keshan - woollen sarong - was woven to commemorate Luingamla’s path to justice, with the design passed down through Naga communities and reproduced 15000 times by 6000 women as a symbol of solidarity with the Naga resistance and the fight against state violence towards women. Alone it is a beautiful striking textile, but with context its patterns have even more vibrancy.

Violeta Parra: Fresia and Caupolicán, 1964-65 — this artwork depicts a passage from the sixteenth century epic poem La Araucana that narrates the Spanish conquest of Chile focusing on the Arauco war fought between the Spaniards and indigenous Mapuche people. The dyed jute fabric with embroidery tells the story of one moment of barbarity between the Spaniards and Fresia and Caupolicán, with fairly malevolent figures. It’s potentially the oldest work in the whole exhibition?

Hannah Ryggen: Blood in the Grass, 1966 — this tapestry addresses the atrocities of the US invasion of Vietnam, made at a time when Ryggen was receiving news in a left-leaning Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. Organically created on the loom with no preparatory sketches, the woven and tufted tapestry depicts president Lyndon B. Johnson as a cowboy next to blooded fields. It is a mish-mash of techniques that actually comes across to me as comical and naïve, until the context is read.

Images: 1. Zamthingla Ruivah; 2. Violeta Parra; 3. Hannah Ryggen.

Arpelleristas: Untitled arpilleras, 1970s — literally meaning ‘burlap’, arpilleras were made in workshops by economically-deprived women of Santiago from scraps of fabric. They were rolled up and smuggled out of the country to inform those outside Chile of the state violence and human rights violations under dictator Pinochet’s regime. These are incredibly detailed narrations of agriculture, education, and violent incidences, that needed to be interpreted adequately by outsiders.

Teresa Margolles: Dylegued (Entierro) Dylegued (Burial), 2013 — over the course of two years, Margolles worked with embroiderers in six cities to document and bear witness to killings and murders, of which the embroiderers had close ties to. The process of making the works was documented on film, opening space for conversation and mourning. The patchwork tapestries often contain material residues from murder sites, however UK law disallows a particular piece containing human blood from being displayed. It was very difficult to fully understand the piece when displayed like this, because of the dark room and inability to see the whole work, and though the narrative was compelling, I couldn’t give it enough capacity.

Images: 1. Arpilleristas; 2-3. Teresa Margolles textile work and videos.

Wound and repair.

In the face of crisis, atrocity and deep physical, psychic and societal wounds, in what ways might textiles gesture towards healing and repair? What is the potential for fabric — with its inherent tactility and associations of feeling, touch and intimacy with the body — to reckon with personal stories of hurt and pain?

Louise Bourgeois, Diedrick Brackens, Harmony Hammond, José Leonilson, Georgina Maxim and Angela Su use textiles’ close relationship with the body and memory to communicate stories of personal and collective trauma and its aftermath. Their work also suggests the recuperative potential of working with fabric and thread; we bandage wounds and breakages with cloth, and we suture cuts with threads. Many of the artists turn to sewing as a metaphor for healing in the aftermath of violence: to sew is to puncture, to mend, to bind together, to attend to a split in an attempt to bring fragments into a whole.

Angela Su: Sewing together my split mind, 2019-20 — using hair as embroidery thread, Su immediately charges associations with the body and femininity, and uses it to depict detail drawings of eyeballs, vulvas and breasts. They were made in response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Su’s reckoning with the effects of state violence on body and mind, drawing upon the tradition of activists of using ‘body sewing’ in protest of the suppression of free speech. Even without context, they were captivating and somewhat disturbing images.

José Leonilson: Where can I find one bay to rest my head?, c.1990 — super simple rustic embroidery that struck me because of its simplicity. When diagnosed with HIV in 1991, Leonilson switched to textiles from painting, naming cities in his works to represent his search for artistic, economic and sexual liberation.

Harmony Hammond: Bandaged Grid #9, 2020 — the use of canvas, burlap, rags and pieces of domestic linen attached in strips and stained red provides an appearance of bandages, especially with stabbed holes to signify wounds. I liked it’s abstract nature, and was definitely the type of sensationalist art I appreciated in art college, however, even now I find myself disliking the obvious bloddied tea towel, preferring the more subtle strips.

Diedrick Brackens: fire makes some dragons, 2020 — a statistic encountered during the Covid-19 pandemic on rate of HIV diagnoses for Black and Latino men shook Brackens to question what we do in “the face of annihilation, apocalypse, pandemic?” The resulting tapestry shows two silhouettes in an embrace commenting on how community proffers a way to attend to one another, when other means may be denied. The latch-hooking creates a textured piece aiming to symbolise flames.

Images: 1. Angela Su; 2. José Leonilson; 3. Harmony Hammond; 4. Diedrick Brackens.

Louise Bourgeois: Arch of Hysteria, 2000 — Bourgeois uses textiles to help her process childhood fears of abandonment, piecing together the cloth in order to “keep things together and make them whole”. The levitating body appears in motion, as if under a spell, signifying hysteria. It is patched back together quite crudely as if bandaged up. I actually find this work very sweet, potentially because all of the other works we so grand (and in fact a lot of Bourgeois’ works are super large-scale) so in comparison this felt intimate and sacred.

Georgina Maxim: Dear Fesmeri and Mareni, the Dress Doesn’t Fit, 2022 — Maxim’s work is an attempt to process and heal trauma, using the ability of textiles to retain memory and combines various textiles to give the impression of a dress, even though it is more of a wall-hanging. In Shona culture when a person dies, their clothing is distributed among the living; Maxim preserves the memory of her mother through her repetitive stitching. I appreciated the melding of fabrics and sashiko-style stitching, and can imagine it being worn as a high-fashion item!

Images: 1-2. Louise Bourgeois (main and detail); 3-4. Georgina Maxim (main and detail).

Ancestral threads.

Textiles lead us back to our ancestors. Embedded in a fabric are multiple living histories and memories of the hands that have crafted them. Entangled in a textile are the knowledge systems of Indigenous people, who for centuries have used thread as a means for communication — to share information, to tell stories and to express themselves.

Unravelling the layered history of a textile reveals stories of globalism and trade, and the extraction and displacement caused by colonisation. For example, a single thread of cotton dyed with indigo summons histories of empire and the transatlantic trade and labour of enslaved people — both through the production of cotton, harvested by enslaved people in the USA, and through the trade of the dye, extracted from the Indigofera tinctoria plant, which itself was cultivated in plantations in the Southern states of the USA as well as those established by the British Empire in India. At points, one length of indigo-dyed cloth was considered to have the same economic value as an enslaved person — a brutal reflection of how both humans and nature were understood as currency. Textiles therefore not only reveal histories of creativity and imagination but also speak to the systems of marginalisation and violence that have sought to suppress Indigenous knowledge for fear of its power.

The final section of the exhibition extends across the lower galleries and gathers a group of intergenerational artists who look to their own ancestors for inspiration. Many draw from cultures beyond their own, and acknowledge their debt to the practices they took from. Together, these artists reclaim, relearn and summon ancient techniques and materialities to find alternative, embodied modes of communication in the present.

Jeffrey Gibson: SPEAK TO ME SO THAT I UNDERSTAND / WE PLAY ENDLESSLY / PEOPLE LIKE US / Prism, 2018-9 — drawing on his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage and the textile works of the women in his family, Gibson was inspired to create these four garments resembling those worn by dancers in powwow ceremonies. Contemporary references are included via the names, as well as “modern” materials including neoprene and vinyl. They’re purposely ungendered to highlight the non-binary gender roles found in many indigenous cultures, and to tackle his own challenges with sexuality as a gay man. They are colourful, textured, and you can imagine how they’d move on and with the body.

Myrlande Constant: By the power of the Almighty, Jean Simon Britus, Grann Brigitte and Captain Jean Zombi are Masters and Mistresses of the Four Corners and Centre of the Cemetery, 2014-17 — ‘drapo Vodou’ flags in Haiti depict spirits, typically with sequins. In this drapo, Constant shows a cemetery scene where, in a sort of capturing of capturing action, spirits on horseback strike transgressors who are attempting to capture zonbi - a body or spirit that is raised from the dead and forced to obey the reviver. A story of exploitation and enslavement, even amongst the dead. It is so ridiculously detailed, with every small segment offering much to look at. The handwork is incredible and displays such a visionary drawing.

Images: 1-2. Jeffrey Gibson; 3-4. Myrlande Constant (two close-ups).

Mercedes Azpilicueta: Lady’s Dreams or Stop Right There Gentleman!, 2019 — this large-scale tapestry pays tribute to a proto-feminist retelling of the colonial myth of Lucia Miranda, a white woman captured by the Indigenous population of what is now known as Argentina. Typically used for patriarchal stories, this tapestry gives agency to both women and Indigenous folk and allows them to seek alternative ways of life within this landscape. Grand and detailed with lots to look at, and somewhat amusing.

Yinka Shonibare: Boy on a globe, 2008 — apparently Shonibare started using Dutch wax prints in the 1990s when a teacher commented that he wasn’t creating “authentic African art”, despite his African origin. This work, like many others, explore the trade of raw materials and goods and people. It’s not a work I’m drawn to, so I didn’t give it much thought, but the exhibition text suggests it also regards environmental disaster through the warm hues of the globe and of the boy falling forward.

Yee I-Lann: TIKAR/MEJA, 2018 — in pre-colonial Southeast Asia, people sat on woven mats call tikar before tables were introduced by Western settlers. Here images of tables are woven into the pieces, with warp and weft built from colourful pandan leaves - an ancestral technique (known as Bajau Samu Dilaut) and raw material. I was really taken by the skill in creating such background patterns, while also incorporating a motif. The exhibition text names the weavers of these 12 mats (as part of a series of 60).

Kevin Beasley: Phasing (Flow), 2017 — the housedresses were acquired from a shop in Harlem where Beasley’s grandmother and great-grandmother would shop, and would moulded over foam spheres, so resembling floating heads. Sounds were then played from a mic that picked up noise of various gallery spots. The text says that Beasley engages with the history of objects, but I truly didn’t understand what the personal draw (apart from his grandmothers’ wardrobe) to these materials were. Frankly it was my least favourite work from the whole exhibition as it simply didn’t make sense.

Images: 1. Mercedes Azpilicueta; 2. Yinka Shonibare; 3. Yee I-Lann; 4. Kevin Beasley.

Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankowicz: Messengers of the Sun, 2022 — part of the ongoing Electric Dub Station project that delves into the history of indigo, this large-scale indigo-painted, block printed and embroidered hanging pays homage to “the ancestral knowledge systems disseminated across the world through the enforced migration of people”. It was a bulky work of patched indigo-dyed and block-printed pieces, sashiko-stitched on, with lots of little areas to explore. It was also displayed almost like a kimono.

Tau Lewis: The Coral Reef Preservation Society, 2019 — reimagining the people who lost their lives during the enslavement of the 16th-19th centuries as sea creatures, Lewis gives new meaning to what they gave. Lewis repurposes salvaged materials from yard sales and her own works, and uses found shells to create living bits of the characters she depicts. It felt a little macabre to me actually, with these dark heads containing spiky shell teeth; the work about about vodou spirits was uplifting to me, while this one was dark and spooky.

Images: 1-2. Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankowicz (detail and main); 3-4. Tau Lewis (detail and main).

“Reaching back to ancestral knowledge systemsoften involves contending with histories of oppression and extraction; many artists work to transcend these forces through courting the divine. The artists here use textile and fibre to aid communion with powers beyond themselves. Rather than a way of escaping reality, these artists lean towards the spiritual to process the world around them”.

Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu Austral, 2012 — the ancient Andean form of the ‘quipu’ is a system of writing with knots, and is a ritual that Vicuña harnesses to commune with the cosmos. Quipu were banned in 1583 following the Spanish Conquest, and so these lengths of unspun dyed wool that are knotted at the top form a prayer and poem for Indigenous peoples and their connection with the rest of the world. A recording of Vicuña speaking aloud poems to do with water connects the flowing of spirits and life with the physical world. It is from the onset a simple work, but takes up grand space with it’s vibrant hues traditionally used in Andean weaving. Unfortunately you couldn’t seemingly walk through it though, as with the hanging work in the Tate’s Turbine Hall.

Sarah Zapata: To Teach or to Assume Authority, 2018-19 — the structure of this shag sculpture resembles the architecture of the Nazca ceremonial site of Cahauchi [Peru], where a huge woven cloth was excavated. Connecting her Peruvian-American heritage to the notion of textiles as a domestic craft, Zapata subverts the rug as floor-only (which became a thing in Peru only after the Spanish Conquest) by building a radically messy installation. I’d come across this at the Stedelijk Museum and was immediately drawn to its vibrancy. Again, it’s always a shame that you can’t explore the tactility and support of structures like this.

Magdalena Abakanowicz: Vêtement noir (Black garment), 1968 — in post-Second World War Poland, figurative painting and folk craft practices were encouraged as they were emblematic of rural life, to which Abakanowicz revelled in the vernacular traditions of textiles, such as kilim weaving. Transforming this into living sculptures of rope, metal and horsehair, she unsettled traditional notions of craft. The full exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2022-3 introduced me to her work, and here still I want to climb into the organic forms, especially as they still smell so strongly of natural fibres.

Images: 1. Cecilia Vicuña; 2. Cecilia Vicuña (background) and Sarah Zapata (foreground); 3. Sarah Zapata; 4. Magdalena Abakanowicz.

“Thinking through the origin of textiles involves attending to their literal material beginnings, crafted and teased out from the earth itself. A reverence for organic matter underpins these practices, the tactility of natural fibres offering scope for experimentation”.

Jagoda Buić: L’ange chassé (Fallen angel), 1967 — Buić’s works are inspired by the rural and coastal environments of what was then Yugoslavia, and she incorporated traditional Yugoslav weaving techniques to create large expressive structures, frankly akin to that of Abakanowicz. This one was so smelly; the odours of the wool, hemp and sisal were heady. Again, I’d like to climb into it. Buić built the piece to have layers and windows, but you can’t quite tell if the structure is the fallen angel, or if it’s holding them.

Lenore Tawney: Breath of Earth, 1964 / The Megalithic Doorway, 1963 / Secret Path, 1965 / Path II, 1965-71 — a pioneer of the fibre art movement in the US during the 1950s, Tawney technically innovated with methods and techniques to create her own. Studying many Indigenous techniques, she disrupted what was common in European and American weaving, including moving the pieces away from the wall. In the 60s she started using only black and white threads, and incorporating motifs of squares crosses, in order to continue her search for truth and authenticity in form and construction. Simple in colouration and outline, but not in the weave itself.

Images: 1-2. Jagoda Buić (two detail shots); 3-4. Lenore Tawney.

Mrinalini Mukherjee: Sri, 1982 / Vanshri, 1994 / Pakshi, 1985 — using hoop-like structures to create a base to work upwards from, these knotted and twisted dyed hemp ropes develop into an ambiguous form; sort of deity, sort of theatrical costume. They seem to have faces, though Mukherjee always ascertained that they were not a specific religion - even with Sanskrit titles - instead drawing upon various Indian and European traditions and many sacred and mythological iconographies. They were imposing, and took on different characteristics as you walked around them to view from other angles.

Images: 1-3. Mrinalini Mukherjee; 4. Room view with Mrinalini Mukherjee (left), Magdalena Abakanowicz (back) and Jagoda Buić (right).

“Organic matter has been integral to th ecreation of textiles, from cotton to wool, linen, silk, jute and more. While new technologies involving synthetic fibres, dyes and industrial production have opened up exciting new possibilities, plant and natural fibres continue to offer fertile ground for the artists gathered here to explore our entanglement with the earth, which supports and sustains our existence. These artists refuse the idea — imposed on many by Western modernity — that humanity is separate from, or even opposed to, nature.”

Acaye Kerunen — palm leaves and raffia - a duo of fragile yet resilient natural fibres - are knotted, braided, woven and twisted into forms by a collaboration of women. The use of these materials and techniques encourage thoughts of joy in inherited knowledge, but with an undertone of discomfort in the changing climate that is causing destruction to homes and landscapes where the people and plants live. Frankly, the abstract forms did appear to me as hats! And in fact, I’m sure these techniques would be used in millinery.

Solange Pessoa: Hammock (part of 4 Hammocks), 1999-2003 — fabric bags, stained with the orange soil that fills them, resemble parts of bodies, exploring the intertwining of the body and the landscape. In Brazil, cadavers are often transported in hammocks rather than stretchers. Though compact and sturdy, the whole form did indeed look cosy like cushions or fleshy bits. It had the static lifeform appearance akin to Louise Bourgeois' hanging body work shown above, and was it reminding me of Joseph Beuys?

Yto Barrada: Untitled (cosmos yellow), 2021 / Untitled (indigo grey), 2021 — at Barrada’s ecofeminist garden project in Tangier, Morocco, she grows a variety of plants that can be used for natural dyes. The colours she selects summons the history of botany of Morocco and centuries of women who were oppressed for being ‘witches’ due to their knowledge of plants and medicine. Her work is an ode to survival strategies, and I feel this in the use of cooling calming silk in soft hues, and quilting techniques to blockade and yet not block. It’s a resistance between the harsh and the gentle.

Images: 1-2. Acaye Kerunen (main and detail); 3. Solange Pessoa; 4. Yto Barrada.

Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín: Kukulkán, 2023 / Cordón umbilical, 2021 — a backstrap loom is attached around the artist and around a tree where a cord-like textile is made in situ. The video follows Pichillá Quiacaín’s movements as he wriggles and wiggles in rhythm to the weaving and to the land as he gets closer to the tree. The accompanying peg loom houses a physical skein of yarn to embody the Maya feathered serpent deity Kukulkán, but with many folkloric attributes, it’s unclear why Pichillá Quiacaín chose this.

Cecilia Vicuña: Animita (Spirit House), 1974/2023 — these ‘precarios’ are delicate assemblages of materials as a reproduction or homage to ones originally created in 1966, that were made from washed up materials from a Chilean beach and allowed to disappear in the waves. The talismanic objects were displayed so sweetly on the wall, that even if up close they didn’t seem like much, as a conglomerate of physical poems, they were a reminder of all of the stuff around us. The wooden maquette in the centre was a recreation of a work from 1975 made in resistance against Pinochet’s dictatorship, resembling an open house, and so perhaps was to be a temple for all the ancestral stories we hold.

Images: 1-2. Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín (video and 3D work); 3. Cecilia Vicuña small works on wall; 4. Cecilia Vicuña wood maquette.

Overall, it was an intense exhibition with a lot to take in. It was thoughtfully curated into the sections and how it directed you through the space. The dialogues were vast, with many challenges I wouldn’t have thought it would bring up. Many works I didn’t particularly “like” in the sense that the textile technique or the colours or the aesthetic simply didn’t move me, but the context did. I learnt a lot, and the main point of retaining information from the exhibition text here, is so that that insight is not lost — as so often happens when you leave an exhibition. On the flip side, there were other works that I was drawn to in fact solely for their textile technique, colour, material or aesthetic, and yet not much for what the story divulged.

I particularly appreciated:

• Igshaan Adams’ large-scale weaves because I just couldn’t fathom the fiddly nature of such pieces.

• T. Vinoja’s organic embroidery drawings for the markmaking and colour.

• Louise Bourgeois’ little floating body, for it being for some reason captivating.

• The detail of the Arpilleristas’ mats, and that they were used as secret communication.

• Cian Dayrit’s silk maps of extraction and land use.

• Zamthingla Ruivah’s woven cloth was striking, and the context behind it also.

• Myrlande Constant’s sequin beaded Vodou flag for its intensity of skill and patience.

• Cecilia Vicuña’s talismans and how they were displayed.

• Yto Barrada’s soft-hued silk block quilts.

• Jagoda Buić form and how it smelled.

To read other reviews, and particularly statements from artists who requested the removal of their works, see these links:

Censorship at the Barbican.

Statement from Barbican on the London Review of Books Winter Series.

TOAST magazine review.

Dezeen review.

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art is showing at Barbican until Sunday May 26th, 2024.

All images unless otherwise stated were taken by me at the exhibition.

Read more textile exhibition review posts, such as:

Cotton: Labour, Land and Body.

Rooted beings.

Mother Goddess of the Three Realms.