Casey Kaplan
Igshaan Adams and Kevin Beasley are included in Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican Centre, London, on view through May 26, 2024.
Textiles weave through our everyday lives yet remain one of the most under-examined mediums in art history and contemporary practice. The universality of fabric has made it a potent messenger across global contexts – whether communicating personal stories or conveying hidden messages. Embedded in a single thread is the material history of the medium, revealing ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Unravel: The Power of Politics and Textiles in Art will shine a light on artists from the 1960s to today who have explores the transformative and subversive potential of textiles, harnessing the medium to ask charged questions about power: who holds it, and how can it be challenged and reclaimed? Spanning intimate handcrafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, this major exhibition will being together over 100 artworks by 50 international practitioners. Drawn to the tactile processes of stitching, weaving, braiding, beading and knotting, these artists have embraced fibre and thread to tell stories that challenge power structures, transgress boundaries and reimagine the world around them.
Unravel: The Power of Politics of Textiles in Art is co-curated by the Barbican, London, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, where it will be on view from September 14, 2024 – January 5, 2025
Image: Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, installation view, Barbican Art Gallery, 13 Feb – 26 May 2024. © Jo Underhill / Barbican Art Gallery