Unravel
The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
Exhibition — Sep 14, 2024 until Jan 5, 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.
This is the textile exhibition we've been waiting for. ★★★★★
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.
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
Dig deeper
Wanna know more about the exhibition?
Read about the exhibition catalogue here.
Prefer to listen? Listen to the audiotour, in which host Ikenna Azuike guides you through eight artworks and discusses the themes of the exhibition Unravel.
CREDITS
Image 1: Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu Austral, 2012. Collection 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine. In Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 2: Sarah Zapata, To Teach or To Assume Authority, 2018-2019. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Acquired with the generous support of the participants of the VriendenLoterij and Young Stedelijk, 2021. In Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
Image 3: Installation view Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 4: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Vêtement noir (Black Garment), 1968. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In Unravel - The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 5: Installation view Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 6: Left: Diedrick Brackens, fire makes some dragons, 2020. The Hudgins Family. Right: Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria, 2000. Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Paris, St. Moritz. In Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 7: Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu Austral, 2012. Collection 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine. In Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.
Image 8: Louise Bourgeois, Arch of Hysteria, 2000. Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Paris, St. Moritz. ©The Easton Foundation / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2023. Photo: Sasa Fuis.
The exhibition Unravel is organized by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Barbican, London. Curated by Amanda Pinatih (Stedelijk) and Lotte Johnson and Wells Fray-Smith (Barbican).
The exhibition in Amsterdam is generously supported by the Cultuurfonds, Zabawas Foundation, and the Mondriaan Fund.
