The Power And Politics Of Textiles In Art @ The Barbican.

Textiles are vital to our lives. We are swaddled in them when we're born, we wrap our bodies in them every day and we're shrouded in them when we die. What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?

Since the 1960's, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has become historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have considered 'craft' in opposition to definitions of 'Fine art', gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market.