Responding to various global sociopolitical tensions, “Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art” at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, was as timely as it was resonant. Complemented by an increasing exposure to textile-based art, the exhibition of works from the 1960s onwards proposed how the cultural history and material function of textiles challenge existing knowledge and power structures.
More than 100 artworks by 50 international (1984), the foremost section featured wall texts that set the tone for the exhibition in its condemnation of hierarchical artistic structures that deem textiles “inferior as a domestic or ‘craft’ practice” and “feminine through a sexist lens.”
