Wyjscie z Egiptu
From the series Wyjscie z Egiptu (Out of Egypt), 2021
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
Textile, acrylic paint and mixed media on wooden stretcher
Mirga-Tas stitches found fabrics — clothing, curtains and sheets — into vibrant patchworks that tell quotidian stories of Roma people. They often cover walls or are displayed in groups, presenting — at human or larger-than life scale — narrative scenes that reveal both public and private aspects of Roma existence. In this work, she presents a snapshot of everyday life: women mend clothes, hang laundry and play cards.
This work was made in response to a print by the seventeenth century engraver Jacques Collot, who depicted Roma people as outcasts. His representations perpetuated commonly-held stereotypes of Roma people as impoverished travellers.
Mirga-Tas resists these associations, instead offering a positive iconography of Roma people today in which women exist in community with each other. For the artist, the fabrics carry intimate memories: ‘I personally feel moved when I see the scraps of material, knowing whom they came from, what I remember and associate with them, and whom they belonged to’.*
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
Wyjscie z Egiptu
From the series Wyjscie z Egiptu (Out of Egypt), 2021
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
Textile, acrylic paint and mixed media on wooden stretcher
Mirga-Tas stitches found fabrics — clothing, curtains and sheets — into vibrant patchworks that tell quotidian stories of Roma people. They often cover walls or are displayed in groups, presenting — at human or larger-than life scale — narrative scenes that reveal both public and private aspects of Roma existence. In this work, she presents a snapshot of everyday life: women mend clothes, hang laundry and play cards.
This work was made in response to a print by the seventeenth century engraver Jacques Collot, who depicted Roma people as outcasts. His representations perpetuated commonly-held stereotypes of Roma people as impoverished travellers.
Mirga-Tas resists these associations, instead offering a positive iconography of Roma people today in which women exist in community with each other. For the artist, the fabrics carry intimate memories: ‘I personally feel moved when I see the scraps of material, knowing whom they came from, what I remember and associate with them, and whom they belonged to’.*
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