the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź

Artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Marsil Andjelov Al-Mahamid, Emilia Bohdziewicz, Geta Brătescu, Oksana Briukhovetska, Maria Bujakowa, Helena Bukowska, Kazimierz Chmurski, Maria Teresa Chojnacka, Anna Daučíková, Cian Dayrit, Stefan Gałkowski, Zdzisław Głowacki, Teodor Grott, Władysław Hasior, Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Rafał Jakubowicz, Maria Jarema, C.T. Jasper & Joanna Malinowska, Danuta Jaworska-Thomas, Katarzyna Józefowicz, Aslaug M. Juliussen, Halina Karpińska-Kintopf, Judit Kele, Lucjan Kintopf, Kosmos Project, Lena Kowalewicz-Wegner, Mariusz Kowalski, Aleksander Kromer, Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, Karen Kviltu Lidal, Ingrid Lønningdal, Maria Łaszkiewicz, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Małgorzata Markiewicz, Zofia Matuszczyk-Cygańska, Rosemary Mayer, Jadwiga Maziarska, Hana Miletić, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Paulina Ołowska, Jolanta Owidzka, Eleonora Plutyńska, Wojciech Sadley, Janek Simon, Władysław Skoczylas, Anna Sokołowska, Antoni Starczewski, Elise Storsveen, Władysław Strzemiński, Janina Trawińska, Ahmed Umar, Sophie Utikal, Anne Wilson, Kiyoshi Yamamoto

Taking the collection of the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź as a departure point, the exhibition engages historical and contemporary artists in dialogue on textiles, work, action and effort over time. It brings together works across geographies, mediums and generations to shed light on different genealogies of textile art, ranging from craft to conceptual art. The exhibition, put together in a former textile factory in tune with the rhythm of that post-industrial space, asks questions about the labour that accompanies textile-making, the relationship between conceptual work and hands-on practice, as well as the work that textiles do as art pieces, functional objects and carriers of community. 

The museum’s collection is a repository of knowledge on the techniques, materials and values associated with textile art. In the exhibition, we suggest a reading of the complex tangles of the medium’s history in three chapters juxtaposing works from different periods: Tradition, Design and Language. Looking back at iconic works by Polish artists of the 1960s and 70s, the exhibition reveals a revolutionary moment that liberated textiles from the confines of utilitarianism. This key juncture in the history of the medium carved a path to change.

Subsequent generations continued to unfold the story. Work with the two fundamental structural elements of warp and weft sets a rhythm to which a new organism grows: the textile. Time plays a crucial role in the cycle. It is measured by each consecutive loop; it affects the textile’s biological materiality, keeping it in the flux of constant change. At this exhibition, the textile becomes a tool for artistic and political expression. It activates the body and questions the norms and standards of architecture as well as the notions of what work can be. “Textile in the expanded field” operates in many different ways; like no other medium, it is a record of the movement of hands, the rhythm of machines, and the passage of time. It is an archive of work, yet it never stops working in relation to spaces and people. We exhibit textile as a medium of perpetual experimentation and emancipation, in artistic as well as social and personal terms.

The exhibition is part of the project Interweaving Structures: Fabric as Material, Method and Message, run jointly by the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen, and the Doctoral School of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

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