Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
14.09 - 05.01.2025
Uncovering the subversive potential of textiles, ‘Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art’, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, ambitiously explored how artists have used this medium to critique and challenge systems of power. The travelling group exhibition, featuring 45 artists from around the world, was jointly organised by the Stedelijk and the Barbican Centre in London, where it was exhibited last May.
‘Unravel’ gathered over 100 works that express the versatility and agency of textiles into a compelling intergenerational conversation. It included revered artists such as Sheila Hicks, Louise Bourgeois, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Faith Ringgold, whose textile art played an influential role in shaping the use and appreciation of the medium.
Hicks is celebrated for her use of colour and experimental approach that playfully weaves, wraps and ties fibre into pieces with a distinct sculptural quality. In Family Treasures, she carefully wraps clothing into bundled reminders of the role textiles play in our daily lives. Bourgeois’s textile works take on a sculptural form, often depicting the body; she advanced the use of the medium to explore deeply personal subject matter. Arch of Hysteria is an example of how her needlework held the desire to repair both psychic and physical wounds as she grappled with difficult relationships, traumatic events and painful emotions. On the other hand, Abakanowicz’s textile sculptures and installations are iconic for their monumental size. Referred to as Abakans, the works are woven from materials such as jute, hemp, animal fibres and sisal. Ringgold’s legacy expanded the narrative potential of textiles as she layered writing, activism, and painting into the medium to form story quilts.
Some works, such as Lady’s Dreams or Stop Right There Gentlemen! by Mercedes Azpilicueta, demanded that I step back to witness their power. In this work, Azpilicueta uses the grandeur associated with traditional tapestries and subverts the patriarchal narratives they depict by paying tribute to feminist reinterpretations of popular colonial legends. LJ Roberts’s tender portraits of loved ones in the queer community, pulled me closer, inviting me to listen to the intimate stories of their embroidered details. The three small-scale works embrace messiness and complexity as their tangled back stitches are on display too.
Sarah Zapata, To Teach or To Assume Authority, 2018-2019. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In
Unravel – The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo
by Peter Tijhuis.
At certain moments in the exhibition, I felt its scale to be overwhelming and in other moments, the works offered measures of reprieve. Following the lines in works such as Secret Path by Lenore Tawney, lulled me into a meditative appreciation of knots, weaves and empty spaces, while the celebration of colour, texture and pattern in works like Sarah Zapata’s To Teach or To Assume Authority re-energised me with a childlike sense of curiosity and awe.
‘Unravel’ was grouped into six themes: Subversive Stitch, Fabric of Everyday Life, Borderlands, Bearing Witness, Wound and Repair, and Ancestral Threads. These themes served as a helpful guide as I made my way through, tracing the politics that bind its selection. Cecelia Vicuña’s monumental work Quipu Austral sets the tone for the exhibition’s impressive scale. Metres of unspun wool bound in thick knots and draped from the ceiling, gentle folds hem the wool’s excess as it rests on the ground. I quickly envisioned each bundle of red, brown, orange and yellow fibre as a delicate offering in honour of the ancestral wisdom the work calls upon.
The work reimagines a system of communication and record-keeping that was used by indigenous communities in the Andes mountains of South America. This revival is a powerful form of resistance against the colonial domination that demonised and abolished its use. The work is accompanied by a sound piece in which Vicuña’s hums and cries, a haunting experience. Though soft, her singing seemed to follow you to different parts of the room, lingering in the air like the colonial legacies it conjures. A similar resistance runs through the works of artists based in Southern Africa featured in the exhibition — Nicholas Hlobo, Billie Zangewa, Georgina Maxim, and Igshaan Adams—bringing to life the intention behind the title Quipu Austral, which seeks to highlight the interconnectedness between the people and arts in the Southern Hemisphere.
Nicholas Hlobo, Babelana ngentloko, 2017, Ribbon and leather on linen canvas, 160 x 250 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Photo by Anthea Pokroy.
Babelana ngentloko by Nicholas Hlobo ties leather and ribbon together with a perfectly balanced hold that softens the contrast of the materials. The hybridity that forms through this entanglement allows Hlobo to disrupt the gendered associations the materials hold, thereby challenging gender binaries such as those that have relegated textiles to a domestic and feminine sphere. The surface of this linen canvas is further charged by the personal excavation of the complexities of being a gay Xhosa man in South Africa, which is embedded in Hlobo’s practice. Dipping in and out of a trail of evenly punched holes, the ribbon swirls across the canvas, mirroring how water would flow through a stream. This sense of motion and the subtle outlining of organic form invokes the body and is also reminiscent of Hlobo’s performance art.
In works such as Igqirha lendlela, Hlobo animates his textile sculptures and blurs the boundaries between his body and the materials he uses. Stitched into a biker’s jacket that was part of his costume, Hlobo carried a rubber hump on his back as he moved across various parts of Cape Town expressing the weight of the burdens South Africans carry. So then, like the movement we anticipate in Hlobo’s performances as he inhabits his textiles, I danced between being sure of the leather’s stiffness and feeling like it might rise and fall, like skin draped over a current of steady breath. I imagined how this would shift the ribbon into new positions. This tension between stillness and movement speaks to the complicated, lively and even necessary interplay between seemingly opposing forces. And if there is concern that embracing complexity and expansiveness could drift a gaping wound in our sense of identity, Hlobo reminds us that there is a bind that offers healing and repair as we try to reconcile the gap.
Billie Zangewa’s hand-sewn silk collages portray snippets of everyday life that are also charged with a spirit of resistance. Her works challenge limiting representations of Black women and liberate the medium from gazes that confine it to a tradition of craft. Zangewa carefully renders impressive details such as the vibrant tone variations in Black skin that further infuse her technique with a touch of care. The works are autobiographical, drawing the viewer into an intimate observation while offering shared resonance through familiar scenes of rest and recreation.
The jagged outline in Angelina Rising contours the city backdrop with a rough edge. Zangewa’s figure meets this urban landscape with a softness and runs unburdened from the armour many women in South Africa have to shield themselves with when navigating public spaces. Midnight Aura depicts Zangewa’s sleeping figure tucked underneath a floral-patterned cover. Though serene, there is a defiance here too, as subtle politics that call to mind Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance framework are entangled in the sheets. Through her seminal book, Hersey frames sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue and offers The Nap Ministry as a meditation on how rest can become a tool of resistance against capitalism and white supremacy1Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2022).
Georgina Maxim’s stitches are also hand-sewn and imbued with the personal. In Dear Fesmeri and Mareni, the Dress Doesn’t Fit, Maxim sews into a dress that once belonged to her grandmother as she reckons with trauma and loss. Clothing becomes a container for memory and sewing a form of healing that allows her to come to terms with her grief. Beneath the endearments, ‘Fesmeri’ and ‘Mareni’, nicknames for her grandmother and mother, lies a complicated wound. Maxim grew up believing that her grandmother was her mother and carries the loss of a maternal figure she never knew, who passed away when Maxim was three years old. A sense of contemplation is expressed through repetition as stitches ripple across the garment, searching desperately for answers. The garment is transformed through this crowd of stitches and is pinned against the wall as both a symbol of restoration and a sign of the difficulty that lies in seeking closure. Still, there is a yearning for healing as Maxim calls upon the mourning practice kugova nhumbi where the clothing of the deceased is shared between loved ones and pricked with a needle to ensure the items can be mended later2 Lotte Johnson, Amanda Pinatih, Wells Fray-Smith, eds. Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art Exhibition Catalogue (London: Prestel Publishing, 2024). Remembering then, that healing isn’t immediate, nor does it happen all at once, we trace these stitches into a distant future that holds the promise of restoration.
Installation view, Igshaan Adams, Gebedswolke (Prayer Clouds), 2021 – 2023, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2024. Photo by Peter Tijhuis.
The act of tracing is echoed in Igshaan Adams’ works through the desire lines they unearth and the movement they capture. A rich amalgamation of materials maps the informal paths forged by the communities of Heideveld, Bonteheuwel and Langa, who have resisted the boundaries dictated by apartheid spatial planning. The weight of this history of forced removals and segregation nestles itself between intricate weaves of beads, glass, twine, plastic, shells, rope, stones, wire and chains. However, Adams’ careful consideration of colour and negative space aerates this density. The exhibition did well too by giving Adams his own room. The works stretch comfortably across the walls and take up the space they need to honour the expansive landscapes they reference. The low ceiling and smooth lighting in the room also anchored the importance of movement in the works as there was a casting of shadows that reflected the vibrant forms and finishes of the materials used.
Gebedswolke (Prayer Clouds) specifically charts the defiant strides of those who carve their own routes between Bonteheuwel, where Adams grew up, and the neighbouring township Langa. Adams extends the woven outline of gold wire and chains that profile these pathways and considers the atmospheric residue steps leave behind. In capturing the aftermath of the body’s resistance through accompanying dust sculptures, he also references the debris kicked up during performances of the rieldans, traditionally performed by the Nama, San and Khoi. The energetic movements and resulting dust clouds of the rieldans first captivated Adams during childhood trips to the Northern Cape with his grandparents, who were Nama themselves3NOWNESS. Private View: Igshaan Adams. June 25, 2021. https://youtu.be/9nuNs4YQX_Y.
The build-up of matter in Adams’ wired masses and tapestries illustrates the endurance of fleeting gestures, be it the choreography repeated to keep culture alive or the ground traversed to shorten a commute. Ultimately, one can’t help but be struck by the sheer beauty of the works. They make it easy to see how textiles have become a medium many have wielded to alchemise hardship. Though, we must be cautious not to romanticise this resilience.
As we unspool the thread of resistance that runs through ‘Unravel’, Hlobo, Zangewa and Maxim also reveal how refusal is often intermingled with strings of beauty, joy, reinvention and hope. Through their work, we discover the desire to stitch stories that have gone untold. There is a call to broaden the limits we place on our identity and to rest in the ease of simple moments. We also find practices to nurse our spirits through grief and stitches ready to patch up our wounds when they emerge.
It is fitting then that Vicuña’s Quipu Austral is also presented as a “prayer for the union of the world”. Revisiting the audio that accompanied the work with this in mind, I heard the supplication in her voice, calling for us to tie ourselves to hope that change, healing and liberation are possible. And so, I left the exhibition blanketing myself in this hope, something that today feels like it may be the bravest form of resistance.