Goodbye gentle craft, hello subversive stitch

Photo, Chi Lam: 4 Hammocks, 1999-2003, Solange Pessoa/ Courtesy of Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington DC.

Daniel Nelson

An exhibition of textiles? Nah - too boring. Where’s the drama and danger in sewing and thread?

If that’s your reaction, and you don’t bother to see Unravel, The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican, you are making a big mistake.  

Personal and political protest, oppression, violence, struggle, activism, politics, colonialism, crisis, survival, change, subversion, resistance erupt in a starburst of colours, shapes, sizes, materials, techniques, patterns and creativity.

Goodbye gentle craft, hello subversive stitch. It’s magnificent, an unanswerable ripost to US artist Judy Chicago’s question almost half a century ago, “Why is equal time not given to the incredible array of needle techniques that women have used for centuries?”

Works by 50 artists are on display.

For example:

* Mounira Al Solh’s use of embroidery as a disruptive, rebellious force in Lebanon’s political crisis

* T. Vinoja chose to work in textiles because of her experiences in the Sri Lankan civil war, salvaging clothes from borders, excavation routes, tents, checkpoints, bunkers and burial sites

* Teresa Margolles uses material residues from murder sites, including blood, in her tapestries

* Feliciano Centurión turns cheap clothes and mass-produced blankets into an anti-elitist, democratic stance in response to right-wing dictatorships in Argentina and Paraguay

* Georgina Maxim: “When a person dies in Shona culture [Zimbabwe], their belongings are distributed among the living. If a piece of clothing is pricked by a needle, it can be preserved and mended in the future”

* A woolen sarong made by Zamthingla Ruivah commemorates Indian soldiers’ murder of a Naga woman: “the design has been passed down through Naga communities across the region, with more than 6,000 women having produced over 15,000 of them. They have become a symbol of solidarity with the Naga resistance movement and the fight against state violence towards women”

* Nicholas Hlobo’s explores his sexuality as a gay Xhosa South African, with stitching referring both to the pain of colonisation and the possibility of this post post-pain healing

* Pacita Abad, Tschabalala Self and Billie Zangewa give visibility to the humanity of immigrant women, showing social and domestic spaces as sites of personal and political significance

* Cian Dayrit uses maps to reveal how the logic of colonialism is present in current capitalist forces, through displacement and land degradation by transnational corporations in The Philippines

* Malawi-born Billie Zangewa stitches her own story as a form of empowerment, showing herself in a state of rest to counter the capitalist drive for productivity

* Igshaan Adams’ mesmerising installation is “symbolic of a collective act of resistance by a [South African] community who have historically been segregated and marginalised” 

* a depiction of a woman in charge of her own pleasure by Egypt’s Ghader Amer - who was barred from a school painting class because she was a woman

* Margarita Cabrera’s soft cacti are made from discarded US Border Patrol uniforms, as a commentary on migration 

* Arpilleras made in illicit workshops by groups of women in economically deprived areas of Santiago from scraps of fabric during Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile

* a jute and embroidery picture by Violeta Parra shows an act of barbarity that challenges the colonial propaganda that the Spanish were a civilising force

* Angela Su employs hair embroidery on fabric in response to Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests and her reckoning with the effects of state violence on the mind and body

* Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankowicz feature indigo, taken to the US by enslaved people. In the 1700s, the profits generated eclipsed the revenue from cotton and sugar; the deep blue dye became a currency: one length of cloth was traded for one human bod

* Yee I-Lann weaves images of colonial style tables into traditional woven Malay mats

* Yto Barrada, Solange Pessoa and Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín “interrogate the colonial histories that have led to our fraught relationship with our planet”

It’s not all politics and protest: there are monumental works but also much that is intensely personal; there’s subtlety, a lot to look at, a lot to think about.

• Unravel, The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS, until 26 May. Info: Unravel

  • 14 March, Curator Tour with Lotte Johnson, 6.30pm

  • 28 March, Curator tour with deputy. curator Wells Fray-Smith, 6.30pm

  • 29 March, Curator tour with assistant curator Diego Chocano, 6.30pm

  • 8 April, BSL Tour with John Wilson, 6.30pm

  • 17 April, Audio described tour with Lisa Squirrel, 6.30pm