Textiles are vital to our lives. We are swaddled in them when we’re born, we wrap our bodies in them every day and we’re shrouded in them when we die.*
The symbiosis of text and textiles is as old as mankind itself. The allegorical text of storytelling draws from man's skill to clothe himself: the weaving of a plot, fabricating a narrative and the thread of a story, draw from fireside tales passed on while sewing and mending garments. Our ability to create both fabrics and fantasies has enabled us to record our stories in word and weaving. The current exhibition at the Barbican, Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles and Art, has curated a vast range of examples from different cultures and viewpoints that explore the ability of fabrics to record our narrative through touch.
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 express themselves.
A single dyed thread of indigo cotton expresses a multitude of connotations - of empire, colonial ruling and enslaved peoples - and at one point was said to be in equal in value to the people who slaved to produce it. Textile artists have explored this tale by deconstructing dyed garments to their constituent parts and remodelling them into exhibition pieces, using stitch, applique and embellishments. The artist's mark making, like words layered upon the cloth, trace the tale of our recent histories. Stitching through time has been a subversive act, a mostly female occupation, and seen as the default setting for the demure, domestic members of the household. Young girls were taught needle work from the age of five and expected to learn contrition by being silently contemplative. The bent female head was often portrayed in paintings and tapestries throughout early periods. These females learnt to bend the rules even whilst being compliant - for example, by depicting midwives at the nativity scene despite their presence being banned by the ruling church. Defiance in diligence became a way for them to express themselves, using the power of the needle when the pen was denied to them. This act has transcended ages and has seen modern textile artists continue to express emotions and defy conservative views through fabrics.
Stitching can be a subversive act: thread can work as a language to challenge fixed ideas and voice free expressions.
Tracey Emin’s quilt, No chance, allowed her to voice her feelings as a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977, the year she was raped. Old blankets and clothing were used to express these emotions and combine home comforts with the raw truth of her experiences; the decision to pick out the powerful text in a homely blanket stitch conveys the duality of safety and violation.
For Judy Chicago’s Birth tear/tear embroidery, she collaborated with over 150 women to share birth experiences of the mythical, the celebratory and the painful to create a visceral response to the iconoclastic images of the virgin birth. Her method of using nine needles at a time each with three threads emulates the numerical symbolism of the holy trinity and the stitching following painful childbirth.
T. Vinoja’s Border and Bunker explores her experiences of the Sri Lankan Civil War, creating aerial maps informed by her own memories and the testimonies of others. Stitches and salvaged textiles form borders, excavation routes, tents, checkpoints, bunkers and burial sites. During the war, she and her father used clothes to craft bunkers and temporary shelters by filling used saris with earth. She has spoken of the individual stitches as reparative sutures, emulating how fabric was used as first-aid to wrap and cover wounds.
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 the intricacies and complexities of lived experience.
Not all the contributors to the exhibition are female as men also turn to fabrics to explore their feelings and express their frustrations of conforming to male stereotypes. They use a perceived feminine artform to play with expectations and social narratives.
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.
Jeffery Gibson drew from his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage and traditional powwow ceremonies, particularly those worn by the Northern Paiute people as spiritual protection in the pacifist Ghost Dance movement, in order to explore his identity as gay man. He plays with the nonbinary gender roles found in many indigenous cultures and his garments are deliberately ungendered.
Politics and art have always been unique companions; this is demonstrated nowhere more simply than the blank wall gaps where artist work has been withdrawn because of the current war in Gaza. Exhibition, explanation and discussion have always been the point of creative artwork, to open dialogue and demand a further look at the intended focus. This exhibition allows a dialogue to be created across cultures, genders, stereotypes and societal norms. Long may the thread be an advocate for communication and understanding. Long may we see more artists using textiles to tell their individual stories.
*Italicised quotations are taken from the exhibition catalogue.
Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Zine magazine and The Arts Council and she writes her own blog, Small Sublime. Her work is currently on exhibition at the Ikon Gallery.
