Sweven, 2022
Sanford Biggers
Antique quilt, assorted textiles and acrylic
Biggers is interested in ‘codeswitching’, the ways in which people — often people from the global majority — change their behaviour in different contexts, not to fit in, but to survive. This work draws upon the contested history of quilts being used as ‘code’ to signpost routes for enslaved freedom seekers travelling on the Underground Railroad in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The colours and patterns on the quilts potentially indicated which way togo, where was safe and where was dangerous.
Biggers sees the pre-existing quilt patterns as a first layer of ‘code’ and his interventions as ‘another layer of code to be deciphered somewhere in the future.’ This work uses an antique quilt with a ‘bricklayer’ pattern similar to that used by Loretta Pettway. Sewn, cut and painted patterns collide in an optical illusion. The eye-bending intervention of clashing signs and patterns suggests that code is dynamically being written and rewritten in the continual present. What we see shifts; the visuals are as slippery as history itself.*
From the exhibition
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
(February – May 2024)
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.
What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?
Since the 1960s, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has been historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have been considered ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’, gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market. The 50 international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider socio-political narratives, teasing out these entangled concerns through a stitch, a knot, a braid, through the warp and the weft. These artists defy traditional expectations of textiles, embracing abstraction or figuration to push the boundaries of the medium. They draw on its material history to reveal ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Rather than dictating a chronological history of fibre art, the exhibition is organised in thematic dialogues between artists — across both generations and geographies — to explore how artists have embraced textiles to critique or push up against regimes of power. Some artists work alone with solitary, near-meditative practices, while others reflect the shared approach that the medium often invites, working with collaborators in acts of community and solidarity. Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, these artworks communicate multi-layered stories about lived experience, invoking the vital issues embedded in fibre and thread.
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken at the Barbican Centre
Sweven, 2022
Sanford Biggers
Antique quilt, assorted textiles and acrylic
Biggers is interested in ‘codeswitching’, the ways in which people — often people from the global majority — change their behaviour in different contexts, not to fit in, but to survive. This work draws upon the contested history of quilts being used as ‘code’ to signpost routes for enslaved freedom seekers travelling on the Underground Railroad in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The colours and patterns on the quilts potentially indicated which way togo, where was safe and where was dangerous.
Biggers sees the pre-existing quilt patterns as a first layer of ‘code’ and his interventions as ‘another layer of code to be deciphered somewhere in the future.’ This work uses an antique quilt with a ‘bricklayer’ pattern similar to that used by Loretta Pettway. Sewn, cut and painted patterns collide in an optical illusion. The eye-bending intervention of clashing signs and patterns suggests that code is dynamically being written and rewritten in the continual present. What we see shifts; the visuals are as slippery as history itself.*
From the exhibition
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
(February – May 2024)
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.
What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?
Since the 1960s, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has been historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have been considered ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’, gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market. The 50 international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider socio-political narratives, teasing out these entangled concerns through a stitch, a knot, a braid, through the warp and the weft. These artists defy traditional expectations of textiles, embracing abstraction or figuration to push the boundaries of the medium. They draw on its material history to reveal ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Rather than dictating a chronological history of fibre art, the exhibition is organised in thematic dialogues between artists — across both generations and geographies — to explore how artists have embraced textiles to critique or push up against regimes of power. Some artists work alone with solitary, near-meditative practices, while others reflect the shared approach that the medium often invites, working with collaborators in acts of community and solidarity. Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, these artworks communicate multi-layered stories about lived experience, invoking the vital issues embedded in fibre and thread.
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken at the Barbican Centre