It is undeniable that fashion has connections with politics: the style choices of heads of state and government are indeed dictated to point at their status, distinction and power.
Yet, textiles can be used to address and analyse a wide range of socio-cultural issues as well, as proved by the exhibition "Cultural Threads" that opened last week (and will be on until 12th may 2019) at the TextielMuseum in Tilburg.
The event comprises a series of pieces by contemporary artists employing textiles as tools to look at a series of issues and questions, including boundaries, power relations, identity and belonging in a globalising world.
In Hana Miletić's practice textiles are for example an opportunity for care, recovery and social bonding: her audio and textile installation "Is Not Written Plain" (2017) is the result of a collaboration between the artist and a group of women of diverse social and cultural origin, who met weekly in a poetry and felt workshops in a community centre.
While working on the colourful felted pieces on display the women exchanged stories and experiences with each other, so that the pieces became tapestries woven with a tangible material wool and informed by intangible voices and impalpable narratives.
The work of Otobong Nkanga, a Nigerian-born visual artist and performance artist based in Antwerp, looks at the geopolitical and historical context of raw materials.
The woven tapestry "Infinite Yield" (2015), explores the exploitation of people, land and natural resources in Africa in relation to colonial history and globalized economy and invites visitors to consider the way in which these processes of exploitation leave scars and gaps in a country and community.
There is a scarification process also in Aiko Tezuka's "Certainty / Entropy (Perakanan 2)" (2014): in this piece part of the fabric was pulled apart, revealing the threads forming it and the underlying material structure.
Tezuka plays here with deconstruction and reconstruction to hint at the way cultural identities merge and history can be viewed from multiple perspectives.
"Ghost I Met" (2013) consists instead of two woven panels in which symbols and patterns from Japanese and European art have been incorporated to symbolise migration, mixing and cultural hybridity.
Mary Sibande's work is particularly striking and it has got some fashion connections: one of South Africa's most talented artists, Sibande uses photographic and sculptural work to investigate race, gender, trauma and identity in post-apartheid South Africa.
Sibande uses in her works her alter-ego, servant Sophie, created to tell stories about colonial power relations, their effect in the present and the construction of identity in post-colonial South Africa.
The narratives behind Sibandes' work often come from her own family history as her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all worked as maidservants in segregated South Africa.
In Sibande's artworks Sophie may be a servant, but she's portrayed as a strong character, clad in voluminous blue (a reference to the blue fabrics of the Zionist churches in South Africa) Victorian dresses, ready to fight rather than to succumb.
Victorian dresses limited movements, so they imply that Sophie wouldn't be able to work if she was wearing something as big as that. The dress becomes therefore a protest against being a maid and at the same time it is the façade that allows her fantasies to come to life.
Through film and photography Fiona Tan investigates postcolonial identities: in "Nellie" (2013), Tan explores the life of Cornelia van Rijn, the illegitimate daughter of Rembrandt van Rijn, who migrated to Batavia (now Jakarta) after her father died.
In the film Nellie wears a richly decorated costume (so also in this work there is a strong connection with fashion) based on historical Toile du Jouy textiles and incorporating exotic plants, birds and other animals that express the western fascination with the Far East.
The film is also an attempt at looking at the world through the eyes of an isolated and forgotten woman who was written out of history.
As a bonus the event also features new works commissioned by the TextielMuseum to four artists – Eylem Aladogan, Célio Braga, Jennifer Tee and Vincent Vulsma – who worked together with the TextielLab.
Eylem Aladogan studied the textile industry of the Ottoman Empire and considered the current political climate in Turkey, with President Erdogan intent on promoting the country's Ottoman past.
Aladogan produced two wall hangings incorporating the floral motifs from Ottoman textile art and juxtaposing the beauty of the decorative patterns with the theme of political power.
The pieces can also be studied from a personal perspective as the father of the artist moved from Turkey to the Netherlands as a labour migrant. The wall hangingsn therefore symbolise the dialogue between two generations of migrants and their conversations about democracy, freedom and nationalism.
Like Aladogan, Jennifer Tee carried out an in-depth research into the textiles of a specific country: Tee researched palepai and tampan fabrics from South Sumatra, Indonesia.
Brought back by Dutch colonisers, the textiles can be found in several museum collections in the Netherlands, they embody cultural exchange and a long trade history, but they are no longer produced.
Tee revived the tradition developing six woven and embroidered wall hangings inspired by these textiles with symbolical elements, including a ship standing for the journey of life, transition and an unknown future and hinting at a personal memory, Tee's father migrating from Indonesia to the Netherlands.
The theme of the voyage is also intrinsic to Vincent Vulsma's installation, but the latter is not about a pleasant journey. Vulsma's series – "Guinea", "Return" and "Voyage" – is inspired indeed by the transatlantic slave trade and the role that goods such as textiles and indigo played in this trade.
The artist studied the logistics of the trade by researching the financial accounts of the Middelburg Commerce Company held in the Zeeuws Archive. Vulsma then translated the information from the logbooks of 18th-century Dutch slave ships into sculptures and into woven and laser-cut fabrics.
Célio Braga's "Memory Unsettled" looks instead at the vulnerability of human existence via a series of different techniques including embroidery, sewing, darning and perforating.
Combining fabrics from different countries – the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Indonesia and Brazil – his installation hopes to connect personal memories, rituals from different cultures and periods to represent the emotional reality of life, death, transience and love.
Apart from the new pieces, the exhibition also provides insight into the creative process behind these new pieces through films, sketches, samples and sources of inspiration.
"Cultural Threads" is therefore a tactile and visual journey through the work of different artists that weave their textile pieces with threads, but also inform them with in-depth researches about history and politics, while tackling social issues in a creative and engaging way.
Image credits for this post
1.Mary Sibande, Caught in the Rapture, 2009, h90 x w60 cm, Courtesy of Gallery MOMO and the artist. Photo: © Image courtesy of Gallery MOMO
2. Mary Sibande, A Reversed Retrogress, Scene 1, 2013, life-sized mannequins, plinth h20 x w600 cm, Courtesy of Gallery MOMO and the artist. Photo: © Image courtesy of Gallery MOMO
3. Jennifer Tee, Tampan Tree of Life, Tampan Womb of Time en Tampan, Mirrored Ship #3, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
4. Jennifer Tee, Detail Tampan Tree of Life, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
5. Jennifer Tee, Detail Tampan Womb of Time, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
6. Jennifer Tee, Detail Ship of Souls, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
7. Jennifer Tee, Detail Tree of Life, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
8. Jennifer Tee, Process in the TextielLab. Photo: Tommy de Lange commissioned by TextielMuseum
9. Jennifer Tee in the TextielLab. Photo: Tommy de Lange commissioned by TextielMuseum
10. Fiona Tan, Nellie, video installation, 2013. Museum Van Loon and the artist, Courtesy Frith Street Gallery, London. Photo: courtesy Fiona Tan and Frith Street Gallery, London
11. Fiona Tan, Nellie, video installation, 2013. Museum Van Loon and the artist, Courtesy Frith Street Gallery, London. Photo: courtesy Fiona Tan and Frith Street Gallery, London
12. Fiona Tan, Nellie, video installation, 2013. Museum Van Loon and the artist, Courtesy Frith Street Gallery, London. Photo: courtesy Fiona Tan and Frith Street Gallery, London
13. Aiko Tezuka, Certainty / Entropy (Peranakan 2), 2014, h27 x w76 x b71,5 cm, Aiko Tezuka/ Galerie Michael Janssen. Photo: Edward Hendricks
14. Aiko Tezuka, Detail Certainty / Entropy (Peranakan 2), 2014, h27 x w76 x b71,5 cm, Aiko Tezuka/ Galerie Michael Janssen. Photo: Edward Hendricks
15. Vincent Vulsma, Return, 25° 40' 0.0012"’ N 75° 13’ 0.0012’’ W, 26° 43' 59.9988'' N 75° 1' 0.0012" W, 27° 34' 59.9988’" N 75° 17' 60'" W, 2017 – ongoing, h27 x w27 x b27 cm, 26,1 kg, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
16. Vincent Vulsma, Detail of Return, 2017 – ongoing, h27 x w27 x b27 cm, 26,1 kg, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
17.Vincent Vulsma, Process in the TextielLab. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
18. Vincent Vulsma installing his work. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
19. Hana Miletić, Detail of Is Not Written Plain, with Globe Aroma, 2017, Courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma. Photo: courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma
20. Hana Miletić, Detail of Is Not Written Plain, with Globe Aroma, 2017, Courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma. Photo: courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma
21. Hana Miletić, Is Not Written Plain, with Globe Aroma, 2017, Courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma. Photo: courtesy Hana Miletić and Globe Aroma. Photo: © Kristien Daem
22. Célio Braga installing his work. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
23. Célio Braga, Detail Memory Unsettled, 2016, plateau h10 x w250 x b250 cm, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
24.Célio Braga, Detail Memory Unsettled, 2016, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
25. Process of creating Memory Unsettled by Célio Braga in the TextielLab. Photo: Josefina Eikenaar/TextielMuseum
26. Process of creating Red Thread by Eylem Aladogan in the TextielLab. Photo: Tommy de Lange
27.Eylem Aladogan during the process of creating Red Thread in the TextielLab, 2018. Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Tommy de Lange
28. Eylem Aladogan, Red Thread, 2018, h170 x w240 cm, Collection TextielMuseum. Photo: Eylem Aladogan
29. Eylem Aladogan, The Haunted Fields (for the love of my Father), 2018, h170 x w240 cm, Collection TextielMuseum (BK1264). Photo: Eylem Aladogan