Friday Fibers Roundup: Contemporary Culture (Politics / Identity / Language)

September 29, 2017

This week’s Friday Fibers Roundup is a collection of articles and exhibitions that critique our current culture (both local and internationally) and offer insightful ways to rethink how things are traditionally done.

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1) “A Legacy: Hair, Language, and Textiles” by Sonya Clark reflects on the use of familiar materials as language used by craftspeople, and how our choices can connect with people who also engage in said materials (via American Craft Council).

2) “How AIDS Changed Art Forever” by Muri Assunção examines three recent exhibitions (Screaming in the Streets: AIDS, Art, Activism at ClampArt, NY; AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism at Museum of the City, NY; and VOICE = SURVIVAL at The 8th Floor, NY) all off which illustrate HIV is no longer a death sentence and the art world is still grappling with its psychological toll (via Vice).

3) “Stitch by Stitch, a Brief History of Knitting and Activism” by Corinne Segal features The Yarn Mission–a knitting collective aimed at fighting racial injustice through community organizing and by supporting black creators’ work (via PBS).

4) Imaginary Friends is the first ever exhibition at the new space No Fun Gallery in Shorewood, WI. Their first show features the work of Mindy Sue Wittock, whose work explores adventures in motherhood and the aching need to save the cloth that holds memories and forever memorialize them in art.

5) Natalie Campbell and Carissa Carman were one of three pairs chosen for 2016’s Center for Craft, Creativity & Design’s Curatorial Fellowship program, and this summer their exhibition Tie Up, Draw Down opened in Asheville, NC. The show features the work of 15 artists, some of whom are formally trained in weaving and some who have never woven before (via Women’s Studio Workshop).

6) “Take a Tour of Nick Cave’s Colossal Playground of an Art Installation” by Nathaniel Ainley looks at Until, Cave’s monumental new installation in Mass MoCA’s largest space (via Creators).

7) “Meet The ‘Nasty Stitches’ Making Embroidery And Knitting Political” by Priscilla Frank looks at artists and curators who want to tell a feminist history and address what’s at stake in America today (via Huffington Post).

8) Aram Han Sifuentes’ Protest Banner Lending Library was recently nominated for a Beazley Design Award (from the Design Museum, London). Many of the nominees reflect the tumultuous time of global political unrest and creative popular resistance (via The Guardian).

9) “How to Embed a Shout: A New Generation of Black Artists Contends with Abstraction” by Seph Rodney looks at the new wave of black abstract artists and how they are exploring ways to push the language of abstraction and still retaining their cultural specificity (via Hyperallergic).

10) “Reframing the American West Through Latinx Eyes” by Yasmeen Siddiqui examines the exhibition Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place at the Denver Art Museum which disrupts the usual museum questions that order and stratify the art-historical canon, memory, and social bonds (via Hyperallergic).