Textiles weave through our everyday lives yet remain one of the most underexamined mediums in art history. Whether it’s gorgeous fashions or artworks, blankets, and beyond, textiles protect us, cover us, engage our senses, trigger our memories, as well as hold and tell our stories. This fascinating exhibition at the Barbican explores this underrepresented art form, delving into the power and politics possible through fabrics and textiles.
Entitled Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, the exhibit explores ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, as well as histories of oppression, extraction, and trade.
Shining a light on artists from the 1960s to today, this major exhibition brings together over 100 artworks by 50 international artists, spanning from intimate, hand-crafted pieces to immersive, large-scale installations.
Split up into themes, with artists placed in intergenerational and transcultural dialogues, these works offer narratives of violence, imperialism, and exclusion alongside stories of resilience, love and hope.
/ Barbican Art Gallery
With the show’s earliest works created in the 1960s, witness the recent evolutions of the art form through the six different themes, including ‘Subversive Stitch’, ‘Fabric of Everyday Life’, and‘Ancestral Threads’. Combined, you’ll be able to explore the role of textiles in artistic practices that challenge dominant narratives.
This truly expansive show weaves together an international, intergenerational array of artists and artworks, bound by their engagement with the practice of textiles–as well as its emotional and political reach across cultures.
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art is on display at the Barbican Centre, running until Sunday, May 26. Standard admission costs £18. Also, every Thursday from 5 – 8pm, entry to Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art is Pay What You Can. Click here to visit the Barbican’s website.