Textiles take the stage

October 08, 2024

Fifty years ago, what was then known as ‘fibre art’ remained on the fringes of the art world. Today, regular exhibitions and critical recognition have become the norm. Lucy Upward charts the emergence into the limelight and salutes some major players

To mark 500 years since the death of artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino— whom we refer to as Raphael—his ten Acts of the Apostles tapestries went on show at the Sistine Chapel for one week in February 2020. The designs were commissioned from Raphael by Pope Leo X in 1515, and made to be displayed in the Sistine chapel below Michelangelo’s famous ceiling. For these tapestry cartoons, Raphael was paid 1,000 ducats (around $150k in today’s money), while the making of the tapestry series cost a staggering 15,000 ducats.

 Oops I made you lose your head After Fragonard The Swing 2023 Anne von Freyburg

We have become accustomed to seeing such high—or indeed higher—prices being paid for the art of names such as Je Koons, David Hockney and Damien Hirst. While the number of art exhibitions dedicated to textiles each month has increased so much that I no longer report it as something unusual, modern-day patrons of the arts have only recently considered spending significant money on contemporary textiles. An area that was once the domain of names such as Sheila Hicks, Anni Albers and Louise Bourgeois is now a well-occupied category of art.

A recent article in The New York Times Style Magazine, titled ‘Fiber Art is finally being taken seriously’, reminds us that in 1969 the exhibition ‘Wall Hangings’, which featured fibre artists including Hicks, at MOMA in New York, ‘received only one major review, in the niche publication Craft Horizons, by the sculptor Louise Bourgeois’. Hicks may have been known, but was certainly not widely appreciated.

Sawiana 2022 Réjean Peytavin Wool rug produced with the Mabrouka Cooperative Tassoultante Morocco

Look online and you will find a lot of recent articles detailing the rise of textile art (fibre art feels like the wrong terminology today). ‘Social fabrics: On the rise of textile and woven art’, by Jareh Das, on the Art Basel website, acknowledges the importance of the carpet artworks of Nepalese artist Tsherin Sherpa (see COVER 69) alongside other artists. ‘Why Fiber Art is (still) having a moment as prices and recognition continue to climb’, on artnet. com, looks at BravinLee Programs’ recent ‘The Golden Thread: A Fiber Art Exhibition’ and the increasing prices textile art pieces are fetching. Brian Boucher writes, ‘At Art Basel this month, a star was Faith Ringgold’s quilted diptych, South African Love Story #2 (Part I and II), at Goodman Gallery’s booth, with a price tag of $2.4 million.’

Every textile history book will explain that textiles tell the story of humanity. Study a textile and you will learn about the lives of the people who made it. It seems strange that textiles have been so excluded from the art narrative, when their history is so rich and evocative.

Gobustan Faig Ahmed Handmade woollen carpet

The work of the American artist and weaver Diedrick Brackens has been instrumental in bringing weaving to the forefront of fine art. His textile works draw from multiple histories, referencing West African weaving, European tapestries and quilting from the American South. The subject of his work combines an element of his own story and the complexities of black and queer identity in the US alongside histories and legends. His artwork If you have ghosts (2024), which was on show earlier this year at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, demonstrates the additional layers of meaning a textile allows.

Finnish multidisciplinary artist and designer Kustaa Saksi also creates imaginary worlds in his jacquard textile pieces, which are in permanent collections such as the V&A, London. His surreal landscapes are inhabited by strange creatures hidden amid a jungle of beautiful patterns. In the recent Mollusk tapestry, currently on show at Gallery Fumi, London, Saksi looks at the diverse forms found beneath the ocean’s surface.

Mollusk 2024 Kustaa Saksi Japanese mino washi paper viscose made from wood pulp

The world of Azerbaijani visual artist Faig Ahmed is also surreal. Perhaps the most well known ‘rug artist’, Ahmed takes rugs to places they had never previously been, planned out with a computer but then rendered by hand. The rugs ooze, seep, bend and stretch, they break the laws of rug design. In his recent exhibition ‘Consciousness in Flux’ at Maraya Art Centre, UAE, Ahmed looked at the physiological and psychological mechanisms of perception.

Textiles have their own language, and French artist Réjean Peytavin was looking at translation in his recent project following a 2022 residency in Villa Hujja in Marrakech. A trip to a former Roman city, Volubilis, made him question the ‘origin of the patterns’. To look at this idea of ‘translating’ the language of di erent media, he asked a weaver from the the Mabrouka Cooperative to produce a rug based one of his watercolours. ‘This style of weaving is also a way of talking with the craftswomen—we exchange a drawing. They offer me their interpretation of my drawing, and I give back a new ceramic according to their interpretation. It is a way of talking through materiality,’ he explains.

Rosebed 2024 Joana Schneider


Photographer Martyn Thompson began using jacquard tapestries to translate his photos in 2013. His 2024 Penny Tapestries series, recently on show at Studio Alm design gallery, Sydney, comes from his acrylic paintings. ‘I think texture and tactility in general have become more essential and desirable as a counterbalance to tech,’ he comments.

German artist Joana Schneider’s pieces not only look to the softness of textiles but also to traditional working practices such as netmaking in the fisheries sector. Discarded rope from the industry plus rescued yarn make up works such as Rosebed. They also serve as performative pieces, when she cuts open the ‘flower buds’ to reveal something beautiful made from old yarn.

Working in a discipline that was formerly seen as female practice, Dutch artist Anne von Freyburg reclaims the female history of textiles through the use of ‘pretty’ decorative elements alongside paint. During her degree in fashion, von Freyburg noticed the prejudice against craft. ‘When I read The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker this confirmed the “soft power” of textiles and that what I was doing has relevance in a broader sense,’ she says.

Within the work of all of these artists, textile history is reinterpreted and reimagined through art practice. Textiles’ place in the world is an ever-evolving dialogue.

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