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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to Art History
- Sprache: Englisch
A lively and innovative collection of new and recent writings on the cultural contexts of textiles
The study of textile culture is a dynamic field of scholarship which spans disciplines and crosses traditional academic boundaries. A Companion to Textile Culture is an expertly curated compendium of new scholarship on both the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles, bringing together the work of an interdisciplinary team of recognized experts in the field. The Companion provides an expansive examination of textiles within the broader area of visual and material culture, and addresses key issues central to the contemporary study of the subject.
A wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the subject are explored—technological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst others—and developments that have influenced academic writing about textiles over the past decade are discussed in detail. Uniquely, the text embraces archaeological textiles from the first millennium AD as well as contemporary art and performance work that is still ongoing. This authoritative volume:
- Offers a balanced presentation of writings from academics, artists, and curators
- Presents writings from disciplines including histories of art and design, world history, anthropology, archaeology, and literary studies
- Covers an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range
- Provides diverse global, transnational, and narrative perspectives
- Included numerous images throughout the text to illustrate key concepts
A Companion to Textile Culture is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, instructors, and researchers of textile history, contemporary textiles, art and design, visual and material culture, textile crafts, and museology.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Series Editor's Preface
Notes on Contributors
General Introduction
Textile Culture
The Content of the Volume: Selecting Themes
Textiles as “Other”: A Politics of Cloth
Geography Is History
Textiles and Materials Innovation
References
Part I: Histories and Frameworks
Introduction
References
1 Unraveling the Fabric of the Past
Introduction
Structural and Material Analysis: Textile Cultures and Identity
Structural Analysis: Technological Choices and Innovations
Characterization and Provenance Studies: Trade and Exchange
Textile Implements: Textile Production, Gender, and Mobility
Paleoenvironmental Data: Textile Resources
Alternative Sources: Written Evidence and Textile Economies
Alternative Sources: Iconography and Textile Use
Conclusion
References
2 Textile Cultures in the Early Modern World
Pioneering Scholarship, Problematic Sources
Cloth and Clothing in Collective Works
Broader Interests, Narrower Focus
New Peoples, New Places
Conclusion: Globalizing But Not Yet Global
References
3 Rewriting Textile Culture with Woven Words
References
4 Branding Tradition
Introduction
How the Research Was Done
Commercial Embroidery: Historical Precedent
Labor of Love: Dowry Embroidery
Austerity Measures: Rabari Embroidery Ban
Emergent Business: Selling Heirlooms
“Craft Nation”: Handicrafts and National Identity
Interventions by State Agencies: GSHHDC
NGOs in the Embroidery Sector
Conclusion: Branding Tradition
References
Websites
5 “The Real Thing”
A “LOG CABIN” Quilt
Museological Context
Cultural Comparisons
Deep Description
Life History and Memory
Textile History
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Part II: Textiles, Trade, and Global Culture
Introduction
Roots/Routes
Industrial Revolutions
References
6 Reading Textiles
Textiles and Silk Road Studies
Silk Road Textiles in Museum Exhibits
Early Chinese Silks and Questions about Complex Looms
The Zandaniji Controversy
Finds of Fifth‐Century Complex Silks at Munchaktepe, Uzbekistan
Finds of the Roman Wool
Taqueté
Wool Finds Around the Taklamakan Desert
Fiber Technologies and Implications
Acknowledgment
References
7 West Africa
Technology, Tradition, and Lurex
The Technologies of Weaving
Imported Materials
Indigo and Other Dyes, Resist‐Dyeing
Other Textile Techniques
African‐Print Cloth
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
8 Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa
Introduction
Sudan
Ethiopia and Somalia
Madagascar
Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda
Mozambique
Southern Africa
References
9 Remaking Tradition in Art and Design in Pakistan
The Trade Significance of Indian Textiles
Circulating Tradition
Salvaging Tradition
The Crafting of Contemporary Art in Pakistan
Contemporary Contexts for Remaking the Traditional: Pedagogy and Design
Design Entrepreneurs
References
Part III: The Social Fabric
Introduction
The Power of Communication
The Politics of Cloth
References
10 Fabricating Identity
Region/Nation/Tribe
Social Status
Gender
Religion
Modernity
References
11 Stitching (in) Trauma
Stitching Identity
Stitching (in) Trauma
Stitching Imagetextile
Fabricating Identity and Stitching (in) Trauma: Janie Terrero
Fabricating Identity and Stitching (in) Trauma: Františka Albrechtová
Conclusion
References
12 Creative Tensions
Looking Back or Backtracking? Thinking Through Textiles and Feminism in 2017
“The Tangle in My Head”: Textiles and the Fissured Foundations of Feminist Art History
Postscript: Skirting the Studio
References
13 Spinning a Yarn of One's Own
Carnivalising Theory, Creolizing Text
Three Artists, Three Objects, Three Historical Moments
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
14 Pictures and Polemics
Introduction
The Veil in Context
Postcolonial Veils: Speaking Back
Postcolonial Veils: Mimicry and Double Critique
Conclusion
References
15 The Subversive Stitch Revisited
Unraveling the Subversive Stitch
Valuing Immigrant Labor and Lives: Aram Han Sifuentes
Immigrant Workers in the Garment Industry
Garment Work, Materialized
Stitching a Citizen:
The US Citizenship Test Samplers
Carole Frances Lung's Subversive Stitches Across Time
Collaborative Sewing, Collective Organizing
Conclusion: Subversive Sewing Today
References
Part IV: Conceptual Boundaries
Introduction
References
16 Modernism's Roots in the Domestic, Decorative, and Vernacular Through Textiles
Cultural Theory
Entrepreneurial Projects
Weaving and Tapestry
Textile Industry and Design in America at Midcentury
Midcentury Textiles and Consumer Culture
Cross‐Cultural Connections
Conclusion
Further Reading
References
17 Material Strategies
Why Is This Happening Now?
Challenging Hierarchies of Medium
Cloth and the Feminist Art Project
The Politics and Poetics of Cloth in Contemporary Art: A Strategy for Articulating Issues Around the Social and Political
Conclusion
References
18 Pragmatics of Attachment and Detachment
Introduction
A Point of Departure: From the Strategic Negotiation of Medium Specific Conventions to Constellatory Complexity; From Negative Contingency to Affirmative Complicity
Embracing Constellatory Complexity
From Strategies of Representation to the Affective Indeterminacy of the Aesthetic Encounter
An Active Opening up to Alterity: Theodor Adorno's Mimetic Comportment
Practice Strategies: Mobilizing Subjective Attachment and Detachment
The Fraying of Boundaries; the Agential Capacity of Textile as a Medium of Convergence and Divergence
References
19 Japanese Textile Culture
Introduction
Tradition and Industry
Junichi Arai: Achievements and Challenges
Five Creators: Contemporary Textile Culture
Conclusion: Looking Forward
References
20 Stories of Innovation
Introduction
El Anatsui
Abdoulaye Konaté
Kwesi Owusu‐Ankomah
Papa Essel
Dorothy Akpene Amenuke
Patrick Tagoe‐Turkson
Ibrahim Mahama: Humanity, Labor, and Capital
Elegies from the East Coast
Northern Blues: Rachid Koraïchi, Lalla Essaydi, and Ghada Amer
Conclusions
Domestic Trade in
kente
and Migrating Images
Further Reading
References
Part V: Reception and Representation
Introduction
Art Biennials: Redefining Center and Periphery
The “Modern Eye”: An Exhibitionary Strategy
Troubling the “White Cube” Paradigm
References
21 Around the World in 80 Biennials
Introduction
Biennials, Triennials, and Periodical Exhibitions in the Context of Fine Art
The Biennial Fever
The Biennial as a Curatorial Problem
Commissions, Participation, Site Specificity, Localities, and the New Cultural Premise of the Biennial
What's Between Textile and Contemporary Visual Cultures?
Textile and the Voice of the “Other”
The Case of Documenta
The Case of Lausanne
Defining Textile, Defining Art
The Case of Kaunas
Biennials Between East and West
The Case of Hangzhou
References
22 Indigenous Textiles of North America
Introduction
Aestheticizing Indigenous Textiles in Early Twentieth‐Century Displays
Exhibitions 1970–2000: Indigenous Textiles Come into Their Own
Conclusion: New Directions for Exhibitions and Artists in the Contemporary Era
References
23 Valorizing Gee's Bend Quilts
Introduction
Modernist Antecedents
The Quilts of Gee's Bend
Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt
New Generation
Implications
References
24 Performing the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures
Collectivity, Syncretism, and Authorship in Indonesia: Heri Dono
Aboriginal Australian Batik: Emily Kngwarreye
Indigenous Activist Weaving and Cloak Making in New Zealand and Australia: Keren Ruki and Cook's New Clothes
Conceptual Textile Practices and Fabric Paintings: Ruby Hoette and Elizabeth Newman
Conclusion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 (a) Example of mineralized weft‐faced tabby weave cloth from Gree...
Figure 1.2 (a) European mouflon ram (
Ovis orientalis musimon
), Chemnitz, Ger...
Figure 1.3 Bronze Age discoid loom weight from Miletos, Turkey.
Figure 1.4 Terracotta oil flask (Lekythos) depicting women weaving at a vert...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Detail of Jat embroidery on “art panel” hanging made by KMVS (NGO...
Figure 4.2 Hands of Dhebaria Rabari woman embroidering a blouse, 1996.
Figure 4.3 Vagadia Rabari wedding, northeast Kachchh, 1997.
Figure 4.4 Dowry embroideries refashioned into tourist goods. Udaipur, Rajas...
Figure 4.5 Shrujan embroiderers at a course to upgrade skills, 2003.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 (a) and (b) “Log Cabin” quilt, front and reverse. Textile Museum ...
Figure 5.2 “Loghouse Quilting”, illustrated in S. F. A. Caulfield and B. C. ...
Figure 5.3 “Log Cabin” quilt, detail. Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ont...
Figure 5.4 Quilt from Pakistan (
ralli
), mid‐twentieth century. Textile Museu...
Figure 5.5 Quilt from Canada, early twentieth century. Textile Museum of Can...
Figure 5.6 “Log Cabin” quilt, folded. Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ont...
Figure 5.7 “Log Cabin” quilt, detail of reverse showing row of machine stitc...
Figure 5.8 “Log Cabin” quilt, detail of one square unit. Textile Museum of C...
Figure 5.9 “Log Cabin” quilt, rough sketch by the author to determine the va...
Figure 5.10 (a) and (b) Letters outlining possible history of “Log Cabin” qu...
Figure 5.11 “Log Cabin” quilt, detail showing “slightly tubular” appearance ...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 A weaver and his loom in Bonwire, one of the major weaving center...
Figure 7.2 A weft‐float design emerging on the loom at the house of Sylvanus...
Figure 7.3 Afranie Buobu, Bonwire, Asante, Ghana, hand stitching four‐inch‐w...
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Printed cloth (
kanga
), Zanzibar, c. 2002 with KiSwahili inscripti...
Figure 8.2 Two women, possibly of the Makua people, Mozambique, late ninetee...
Figure 8.3
Seana Marena
(“King’s Blanket”), made by Aranda Textile Mills (Pt...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Fine cotton turban sample from Jeypoor in Rajpootana, from
The Co
...
Figure 9.2 Aisha Khalid (Pakistan), b. 1972.
Water has never feared the fire
Figure 9.3 Ruby Chishti (Pakistan), b. 1963.
The Present Is a Ruin Without t
...
Figure 9.4 Handloom‐woven cotton. Manufactured by Khaadi Corporation Limited...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi (Tonga/New Zealand), b. 1959.
Pulekafa
,...
Figure 10.2 Eastern Highlands women with Papua New Guinea
bilum
adornments, ...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Embroidery by Janie Terrero, made in Holloway Prison, 1912. The ...
Figure 11.2 Františka Albrechtová, Prisoner of War signature handkerchief, s...
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 Sonia Boyce (UK), b. 1962.
Big Women’s Talk
, 1984. Pastels...
Figure 13.2 Vanley Burke (Jamaica/UK), b. 1951
. Handsworth Park Liberation D
...
Figure 13.3
Journey to the Land of Promise
, 1 January 1954 (West Indian Immi...
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1 Zineb Sedira (France), b. 1963.
La maison de ma mère
,
Algér
...
Figure 14.2 Khosrow Hassanzadeh (Iran), b. 1963.
Terrorist: Nadjibeh
, 2004. ...
Figure 14.3 Zineb Sedira (France), b. 1963.
Silent Sight
, 2000. Video projec...
Figure 14.4 Zineb Sedira (France), b. 1963.
Silent Sight
, 2000. Video projec...
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1 Aram Han Sifuentes,
A Mend (A Collection of Scraps from Local Se
...
Figure 15.2
U.S. Citizenship Test Sampler (Made by noncitizens living and wo
...
Figure 15.3
Sewing Rebellion
(Shirt Apron Production). Museum of Latin Ameri...
Figure 15.4
Sewing Rebellion
(Shirt Apron Production). Melissa Tran, Happy P...
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1 Installation view of the 2014 Biennial (Whitney Museum of Americ...
Figure 17.2 Faith Wilding (USA), b. 1943.
Crocheted Environment
, 1972/1995. ...
Figure 17.3 El Anatsui (Ghana), b. 1944.
Fresh and Fading Memories: Part I–I
...
Figure 17.4 Risham Syed (Pakistan), b. 1969.
The Seven Seas
, 2012. Seven cot...
Figure 17.5 Louise Bourgeois (France/USA), 1911–2010.
Rejection
, 2001. Fabri...
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1 Maxine Bristow (UK), b. 1962.
3 x 19 Intersecting a Seam
, 1999. ...
Figure 18.2 Maxine Bristow (UK), b. 1962.
Concertina catalogue: classificato
...
Figure 18.3 Maxine Bristow (UK), b. 1962. Exhibition installation: Universit...
Figure 18.4 Maxine Bristow (UK), b. 1962. Exhibition installation: Universit...
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Junichi Arai (Japan), 1932–2017.
Woven Structure Pattern
(detail...
Figure 19.2 Junichi Arai,
Tradition and Creation
exhibition (installation vi...
Figure 19.3 Junichi Arai,
Tradition and Creation
exhibition (installation vi...
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1 Togbe Takyi IX, Chief of Biakpa town in Avatime State, walking s...
Figure 20.2 El Anatsui (Ghana), b. 1944.
Strained Roots
, 2014. Aluminum and ...
Figure 20.3 Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana), b. 1987.
K.N.U.S.T. Museum
(installation...
Figure 20.4 Syowia Kyambi (Kenya), b. 1979.
WoMen, Fräulein Damsel & Me/Phas
...
Chapter 21
Figure 21.1 The artist, Jagoda Buić, in front of her work
Hommage à Pierre P
...
Figure 21.2 Installation view of the 10th Kaunas Biennial, 2015, curated by ...
Figure 21.3 Lucy and Jorge Orta,
Nexus Architecture, 50 Interventions Hangzh
...
Chapter 22
Figure 22.1 Installation view of the exhibition, Indian Art of the United St...
Figure 22.2 Opening celebration for Robes of Power at the University of Brit...
Figure 22.3 Will Wilson (Navajo), b. 1969.
eyeDazzler: Trans‐customary Porta
...
Chapter 23
Figure 23.1 Lucy Pettway (1921–2004): Housetop and Bricklayer with Bars quil...
Figure 23.2 Emma Lee Pettway Campbell (1928‐2002): Blocks and Strips work‐cl...
Figure 23.3 Installation view of the exhibition, Gee’s Bend: From Quilts to ...
Chapter 24
Figure 24.1 Heri Dono (Jakarta, Indonesia), b. 1960.
Terorist Batik
(
Terrori
...
Figure 24.2 Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll and Keren Ruki,
Cook’s New Clothe
...
Figure 24.3 Ruby Hoette,
Lost and Collected
, 2011–ongoing. www.lostandcollec...
Figure 24.4 Elizabeth Newman (Australia), b. 1962.
WikiLeaks Dress
, 2014. Pr...
Guide
Cover
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A Companion to Textile Culture
Edited by
Jennifer Harris
This edition first published 2020© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Name: Harris, Jennifer, 1949– editor.Title: A companion to textile culture / edited by Jennifer Harris.Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2020. | Series: Wiley‐Blackwell companions to art history | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2020001906 (print) | LCCN 2020001907 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118768907 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118768648 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781118768600 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Textile fabrics–History.Classification: LCC NK8806 .C66 2020 (print) | LCC NK8806 (ebook) | DDC 677.009–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001906LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001907
Cover Design: WileyCover Images: Shrujan Embroiderers at a course to upgrade skills – Photograph: Eiluned Edwards; Procession for Tupaia – Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, ‘Cook’s New Clothes, Procession for Tupaia’. Performance in The Atlantic Project, 2018. Image reproduced courtesy of Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. Photograph by Dom Moore.; Goroka Show – Eastern Highlands women with Papua New Guinea bilum adornments Goroka show, September 2014. Photograph: Ruth McDougall; Fabric gold plated and steel pins – Aisha Khalid (Pakistan), b. 1972. Water has never feared the fire (detail), 2018. Fabric, gold-plated and steel pins/Triptych: 492.75 × 167.65; 492.75 × 83.8cm; 492.75 × 83.8cm/Commissioned for Asia Pacific Triennial 9. The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 2018 with funds from The Myer Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art Foundation to commemorate the 25th anniversary of The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art/Collection: Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art/© The artist/Image courtesy: The artist
The book is dedicated to Paul, Caroline, and Stephanie Howe.
Acknowledgments
The Companion to Textile Culture has been a long time in gestation. First conceived some years ago, it has been a complex, but always inspiring, project to bring to fruition. In view of this I would particularly like to thank those who came on board at an early stage for their patience and commitment to the volume and its ambitions. They know who they are. But my thanks are due equally to those who, for a variety of reasons, joined later in the journey and made thoughtful and significant contributions against sometimes very tight deadlines. During that period the recognition of textiles as a key element of material culture both historically and globally, and their semiotic potential as a medium of contemporary art, has continued to expand exponentially.
My primary thanks are thus extended to all the contributors to this volume. I would also like to express my gratitude to Akiko Shimizu and Nicolas Cambridge for their enthusiastic participation in the project via their sensitive translation of Akiko Moriyama's chapter on Japanese textile culture, and to acknowledge the generosity of the many individuals and organizations – artists, public and commercial galleries, researchers, curators, and others – who have assisted with sourcing the powerful and apposite images that accompany the book. At Wiley I have enjoyed the support of an able production team, most notably Richard Samson and Sakthivel Kandaswamy. However, my especial thanks go to my copyeditor, Sandra Kerka. She has shown meticulous care in ensuring consistency across a complex multiauthored volume, and I have appreciated her genuine enthusiasm for the subject matter.
The architecture of the book grew out of my thinking about textiles over a long career in the museum and gallery sector and from many years of stimulating discussion with colleagues (artists, curators, and academics) in the sector more broadly. I am hugely indebted to those I have worked with in a variety of different capacities.
I would like to acknowledge a grant from the Leverhulme Trust, awarded as part of an Emeritus Fellowship in 2016–2017, that has supported in many different ways the collating and editing of this book.
Jennifer Harris, 2020
List of Figures
1.1a
Example of mineralized weft‐faced tabby weave cloth from Greece, early first millennium
BCE
.
1.1b
Example of twill weave cloth from Italy, early first millennium
BCE
.
1.2a
European mouflon ram (
Ovis orientalis musimon
), Chemnitz, Germany.
1.2b
Poll merino ram.
1.3
Bronze Age discoid loom weight from Miletos, Turkey.
1.4
Terracotta oil flask (Lekythos) depicting women weaving at a vertical, warp‐weighted loom, c. 550–530
BCE
. Attributed to the Amasis painter (sixth century
BCE
).
4.1
Detail of Jat embroidery on “art panel” hanging made by KMVS (NGO), 2003.
4.2
Hands of Dhebaria Rabari woman embroidering a blouse, 1996.
4.3
Vagadia Rabari wedding, northeast Kachchh, 1997.
4.4
Dowry embroideries refashioned into tourist goods. Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2004.
4.5
Shrujan embroiderers at a course to upgrade skills, 2003.
5.1a
“Log Cabin” quilt (front) in the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto.
5.1b
“Log Cabin” quilt (reverse).
5.2
“Loghouse Quilting,” illustrated in S. F. A. Caulfield and B. C. Saward,
The Dictionary of Needlework
(1882).
5.3
“Log Cabin” quilt (detail).
5.4
Quilt from Pakistan (
ralli
), mid‐twentieth century.
5.5
Quilt from Canada, early twentieth century.
5.6
“Log Cabin” quilt (folded).
5.7
“Log Cabin” quilt (detail of reverse).
5.8
“Log Cabin” quilt (detail of one square unit).
5.9
“Log Cabin” quilt (rough sketch of one square unit made by the author).
5.10a
Letter outlining possible history of “Log Cabin” quilt.
5.10b
Letter outlining possible history of “Log Cabin” quilt.
5.11
“Log Cabin” quilt (detail).
7.1
A weaver and his loom in Bonwire, one of the major weaving centers of the Asante nation, Ghana,1984.
7.2
A weft‐float design emerging on the loom at the house of Sylvanus Akakpo, a weaving master in Kpetoe, Volta Region, Ghana,1999.
7.3
Afranie Buobu, Bonwire, Asante, Ghana, hand stitching four‐inch‐wide strips of woven cloth side by side, 1995.
8.1
Printed cloth (
kanga)
from Zanzibar, c. 2002.
8.2
Two women, possibly of the Makua people, Mozambique, late nineteenth century.
8.3
Seana Marena
(“King’s Blanket”) made by Aranda Textile Mills (Pty) Ltd, South Africa, c. 2012.
9.1
Cotton turban sample from Jeypoor in Rajpootana, from
The Collections of the Textile Manufacturers of India
, by John Forbes Watson, published in 1866.
9.2
Aisha Khalid (Pakistan).
Water has never feared the fire
(detail), 2018. Fabric, gold‐plated and steel pins.
9.3
Ruby Chishti (Pakistan).
The Present Is a Ruin Without the People
, 2016. Recycled textiles, wire mesh, thread, wood, embellishment, metal scrapes, and archival glue; with sound.
9.4
Handloom‐woven cotton. Manufactured by Khaadi Corporation Limited, Karachi, Pakistan.
10.1
Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi (Tonga/New Zealand).
Pulekafa
, 2003–12,
Kulasi
, 2003–12,
Pulefakalava
, 2006, and
Haufa’a
, 2009.
10.2
Eastern Highlands women with Papua New Guinea
bilum
adornments, Goroka show, September 2014.
11.1
Embroidery by Janie Terrero, made in Holloway Prison, 1912.
11.2
Františka Albrechtová, Prisoner of War signature handkerchief, stitched 1942.
13.1
Sonia Boyce (UK).
Big Women’s Talk
, 1984. Pastels on paper.
13.2
Vanley Burke (Jamaica/UK).
Handsworth Park Liberation Day Rally
, 1977.
13.3
Journey to the Land of Promise
(West Indian Immigration into Southampton Docks, UK).
14.1
Zineb Sedira (France).
La maison de ma mère
, 2002. Installation of 12 color photographs.
14.2
Khosrow Hassanzadeh (Iran).
Terrorist: Nadjibeh
, 2004. Silkscreen and acrylic on canvas.
14.3
Zineb Sedira (France).
Silent Sight
, 2000. Video projection (black and white, sound). Film 16 mm. Soundtrack by Edith Marie Pasquier.
14.4
Zineb Sedira (France).
Silent Sight
, 2000. Video projection (black and white, sound). Film 16 mm. Soundtrack by Edith Marie Pasquier.
15.1
Aram Han Sifuentes,
A Mend (A Collection of Scraps from Local Seamstresses and Tailors)
, 2011–2013. Jean cuff remnants from 23 seamstresses and tailors and gold jean thread.
15.2
U.S. Citizenship Test Sampler (Made by noncitizens living and working in the United States)
, 2013–present. 24 out of 120 samplers. Embroidery floss, sequins, beads on linen.
15.3
Sewing Rebellion
(Shirt Apron Production) at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach CA, 2019.
15.4
Sewing Rebellion
(Shirt Apron Production). Melissa Tran, Happy Participant in blue, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach CA, 2019.
17.1
Installation view of the 2014 Biennial (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 7–25 May 2014). Sheila Hicks,
Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column
, 2013–14.
17.2
Faith Wilding (USA).
Crocheted Environment
, 1972/1995. Woolworth’s Sweetheart acrylic yarn and sisal rope.
17.3
El Anatsui (Ghana).
Fresh and Fading Memories: Part I
–
IV
, 2007. Aluminum and copper wire.
17.4
Risham Syed (Pakistan).
The Seven Seas
, 2012. Seven cotton quilts installation.
17.5
Louise Bourgeois (France/USA).
Rejection
, 2001. Fabric, steel and lead.
18.1
Maxine Bristow (UK).
3 x 19 Intersecting a Seam
, 1999. Linen, ticking, cotton, cotton wadding, and gesso.
18.2
Maxine Bristow (UK).
Concertina catalogue: classificatory configuration of practice components
, 2015.
18.3
Maxine Bristow (UK). Exhibition installation: University of Chester, UK, 2014.
18.4
Maxine Bristow (UK). Exhibition installation: University of Chester, UK, 2014.
19.1
Junichi Arai (Japan).
Woven Structure Pattern
(detail), designed by Junichi Arai, 1981–84. Wool, acrylic; jacquard, double weave.
19.2
Junichi Arai,
Tradition and Creation
exhibition (installation view), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2013.
19.3
Junichi Arai,
Tradition and Creation
exhibition (installation view), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2013.
20.1
Togbe Takyi IX, Chief of Biakpa town in Avatime State, with his courtiers and kinsmen, 1996.
20.2
El Anatsui (Ghana).
Strained Roots
, 2014. Aluminum and copper wire.
20.3
Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana).
K.N.U.S.T. Museum (
installation
)
. Kumasi, Ghana, 2013.
20.4
Syowia Kyambi (Kenya).
WoMen, Fräulein Damsel & Me/Phase II Release
(performance still), 2007–2009.
21.1
The artist, Jagoda Buić, in front of her work
Hommage à Pierre Pauli
(1970–71) at the 5th Lausanne Biennial, 1971.
21.2
Installation view of the 10th Kaunas Biennial, 2015:
Threads, Fantasmagoria about Distance
. Bronė Sofija Gideikaitė,
The Trip
, 2013–2015.
21.3
Lucy and Jorge Orta,
Nexus Architecture, 50 Interventions Hangzhou
(installation view), 2013.
22.1
Installation view of the exhibition,
Indian Art of the United States
, MoMA, New York, 22 January–27 April 1941.
22.2
Opening celebration for
Robes of Power
at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, 7 March 1986.
22.3
Will Wilson (Navajo).
eyeDazzler: Trans‐customary Portal to Another Dimension
, 2011. Square‐cut glass beads on loom.
23.1
Lucy Pettway. Housetop and Bricklayer with Bars quilt, c. 1955. Top and back: cotton and acetate.
23.2
Emma Lee Pettway Campbell. Blocks and Strips work‐clothes quilt, c. 1950. Top: cotton and cotton‐polyester blend; back: cotton and polyester.
23.3
Installation view of the exhibition,
Gee’s Bend: From Quilts to Prints
, held at the Center for Craft in Asheville, North Carolina, USA in 2014.
24.1
Heri Dono (Jakarta, Indonesia).
Terorist Batik
(
Terrorist
), 1984. Batik.
24.2
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll and Keren Ruki,
Cook’s New Clothes, Procession for Tupaia
. Performance in The Atlantic Project, 2018.
24.3
Ruby Hoette, Lost and Collected project, 2011–ongoing.
www.lostandcollected.com
24.4
Elizabeth Newman (Australia).
WikiLeaks Dress
, 2014. Printed silk, in collaboration with Ffixxed Studios.
Series Editor's Preface
Blackwell Companions to Art History is a series of edited collections designed to cover the discipline of art history in all its complexities. Each volume is edited by specialists who lead a team of essayists, representing the best of leading scholarship, in mapping the state of research within the subfield under review, as well as pointing toward future trends in research.
This Companion to Textile Culture expands the purview of the series and offers new and insightful considerations of the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles in a global context. The chapters combine to present a genuinely interdisciplinary study of textiles with contributions from academics, artists and curators writing from a range of perspectives including histories of art and design, world histories, material culture, anthropology, archaeology, the history of technology, and literary studies. Together the essays situate textiles within the discourses of visual and material culture and foster new insights into how we might “read” cloth and clothing in different cultural contexts.
This volume is divided into five thematic sections: Histories and Frameworks; Textiles, Trade, and Global Culture; The Social Fabric: The Politics and Poetics of Cloth; Conceptual Boundaries; and Reception and Representation. Each section has a very valuable introduction that sets up the main themes and problematics addressed and makes links between other essays in the volume. The essays themselves present potent analyses that demonstrate how histories of textiles can be reformulated using contemporary discourses usually associated with postmodernism, gender studies and postcolonial studies.
Together, the essays in this volume provide a new and thought‐provoking revision of our conception and understanding of textile cultures and histories that will be essential reading for students, researchers, and teachers working on the history, theory, and practice of textiles and in related fields.
A Companion to Textile Culture is a very welcome and timely addition to the series.
Dana Arnold, 2019
Notes on Contributors
Naazish Ata‐Ullah is an artist, art educator, independent curator, writer, and social and human rights activist who lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. Professor Ata‐Ullah retired in 2010 as principal of the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore. She was awarded the title of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature by the Republic of France, for services to art and culture, and was conferred the Fellowship of the NCA. She is currently an artist in residence at the Printmaking Studio she founded at the NCA, and a senior fellow at the School of Visual Art and Design, Beaconhouse National University.
Valerie Behiery is a Canadian scholar, art consultant, and arts writer whose research focuses on historical and contemporary visual culture from, or relating to, the Middle East, with a special emphasis on gender, cross‐culturality and the politics of representation. A former assistant professor, she has taught in Canada, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Her writing has been published in reference works, books, art catalogs, art magazines, and peer‐reviewed journals including the Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, Implicit Religion, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, the Journal of Canadian Art History, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and Sociologie et sociétés.
Janet Catherine Berlo, professor of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester, NY, has been a contributor to publications on Native art including Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2019), Shapeshifting (Peabody Essex Museum, 2012), and Identity by Design: Plains Women's Dresses (NMAI, 2008). She has written numerous books and articles on Native North American art and maintains a secondary interest in American textile traditions, as demonstrated in Wild By Design: Two Hundred Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts (with Patricia Crews, University of Washington Press, 2003). Berlo has taught Native American art history as a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and UCLA and has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Zeb Bilal is a visiting assistant professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan. She teaches interdisciplinary, research‐led courses with a particular focus on the history of design and South Asian textiles. As an independent researcher, her interests lie in exploring the relationship between craft and design within a wider sociocultural context. She has been studying the textile collections at the Lahore Museum to discover the multidimensional narratives that they embody and working to create pedagogical linkages between academia and the museum. She has also worked as an educational curator, leading an outreach initiative that was designed for the special exhibition Rediscovering Harappa: Through the Five Elements, held at the Lahore Museum and supported by UNESCO (IFPC).
Maxine Bristow is associate professor and MA Fine Art programme leader at the University of Chester, UK. As an artist with a history rooted in textiles, her practice and research draw on the everyday associations, modernist legacies, and postmodern discourses with which the medium is implicated. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in the permanent collections of the Crafts Council, London, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery. In 2016 she completed a practice‐based PhD at Norwich University of the Arts and University of the Arts London titled “Pragmatics of Attachment and Detachment: Medium (Un)Specificity as Material Agency in Contemporary Art.”
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll is an Austrian‐Australian artist based between Vienna and London. She is professor and chair of global art at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her installations and performances feature specific costumes and fiber making practices based on archives and practices of Oceanic art. Her work has been shown internationally including at the Marrakech, Sharjah, and Venice Biennials, the ICA London, Extracity, HKW, Savvy, LUX, Chisenhale Gallery, SPACE, Project Art Centre Gallery Dublin, and the Atlantic Project. She is the author of the books Art in the Time of Colony (2014), The Importance of Being Anachronistic (2016), a forthcoming Sternberg publication on immigration detention Bordered Lives (2019), a forthcoming monograph on repatriation We Have Never Been Pre‐Modern for Chicago University Press, and Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium (2017).
Christine Checinska writes about the relationship between cloth, culture, and race from the perspective of the African Diaspora. The cultural exchanges that result from movement and migration, creating creolized cultural forms, are recurring themes. She is currently a research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg, and lecturer in critical and historical studies at the Royal College of Art, London. In 2016 she delivered a TEDxTalk at the Hackney Empire, London titled Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism. 2016 also saw the opening of her exhibition The Arrivants – an immersive mixed media installation at the FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg. In 2018, she edited Aesthetics of Blackness? – an African Diasporas special issue of Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture (Taylor & Francis Group).
Meredith G. Clark is a bilingual author, educator and artist whose research interests include twentieth‐century Latin American poetry, Andean material culture, and the history of textiles. She earned a doctorate in Hispanic literature from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to teaching courses on the topics of intertextual weavings, Latin American poetry, and the Spanish language, she has published an edited volume of literary criticism titled Vicuñiana: El arte y la poesía de Cecilia Vicuña, un diálogo sur/norte. She currently resides in Dallas, Texas.
Robert S. DuPlessis, emeritus professor of history at Swarthmore College (USA), specializes in early modern textiles, material culture, and economic history. The World History Association awarded the 2016 Jerry J. Bentley Book Prize to his The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800. Recent essays include “Commercial Practices at the Margins of the Merchant Economy,” in Market Ethics and Practices, c. 1300–1850, edited by Simon Middleton and James Shaw, and “Sartorial Sorting in the Colonial Caribbean and North America,” in The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Legislation in a Comparative and Global Perspective, edited by Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack. A revised edition of Transitions to Capitalism in early modern Europe: economies in the era of early globalization (c. 1450–1820) appeared in 2019.
Eiluned Edwards is Professor of Global Cultures of Textiles and Dress at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She has a PhD in art history/archaeology (Manchester University, 2000) and her dissertation analyzed how social change was reflected in the material culture of Rabaris, transhumant pastoralists in Kachchh district, Gujarat. Subsequent research has focused on textiles, dress, fashion, and craft production, notably in India. It has been widely disseminated through teaching, conferences, exhibitions, and publications, including two monographs, Imprints of Culture: Block Printed Textiles of India (Niyogi Books, 2016. Awarded the TSA R.L. Shep Award 2016) and Textiles and Dress of Gujarat (V&A/Mapin Publishing, 2011).
Margarita Gleba received her PhD in classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College (USA). She has worked on excavations in Italy, Turkey, and Ukraine. Her special area of study is the archaeology of textile production and economy, including investigation of textiles, textile tools, as well as relevant written, iconographic and other sources. For four years she was research programme manager at the Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This was followed by a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK. Most recently, she was a principal investigator of a European Research Council‐funded project “Production and Consumption of Textiles in the Mediterranean from 1000 to 500 BCE” at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK.
Maureen Daly Goggin is professor of rhetoric at Arizona State University, USA. She is the author and editor of 10 scholarly books and several editions of a textbook as well as a pedagogical book. Her latest work is Serendipity in Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy Research (University of Colorado Press, 2018), coedited with Peter N. Goggin. She has written widely about the history of rhetoric, writing pedagogy, gender, visual rhetoric, and women and material culture in both journals and edited collections. Currently, she has coedited a collection with Shirley Rose titled Women's Ways of Making and is working on yet another titled Meditating and Mediating Change.
Jennifer Harris is a curator and writer, and Honorary Research Fellow in Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester, UK. She was formerly deputy director at the Whitworth – the university art gallery – where she curated many in‐house and national touring exhibitions. The gallery holds one of the finest collections of historical and contemporary textiles in the UK. Jennifer has researched and published in the fields of fashion, textiles, and avant‐garde craft for over 30 years. Notable outcomes include major exhibitions and associated publications on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, British industrial design, and contemporary art textiles. Her recent research and publications explore textile processes, materials, and metaphors as a conceptual strategy in modern and contemporary visual art. Her book 5000 Years of Textiles, first published in 1993 and reprinted several times, is a standard text.
Adrienne D. Hood is currently a professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto (UofT) where she teaches Early American History and Material Culture. She began her career as a professional weaver, before obtaining a doctorate in American history. For over a decade, she was curator of North American textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum and for several years was Associate Director of the Museum Studies Program at UofT. Her books include Fashioning Fabric: The Arts of Spinning and Weaving in Early Canada (2007) and The Weaver's Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania (2003). Among her articles are “Cloth and Color: Fabrics in Chester County Quilts,” in Layers Unfolding: the Stories of Chester County Quilts, edited by Ellen Endslow (2009) and “Material Culture: The Object,” in History Beyond the Text: a Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, edited by Sarah Barber and C. M. Peniston‐Bird (2008).
Shehnaz Ismail is the founder and professor emeritus at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) in Karachi, Pakistan. IVS was founded in 1989 by a group of professional architects, designers, and artists as a center of excellence for their disciplines. Professor Ismail has spent the majority of her working life in academia. From the inception of IVS she led the Textile Design department. Actively involved in craft revival, she has developed training and design intervention programs for non‐profit organizations throughout the rural landscape of Pakistan. Professor Ismail has also carried out notable design consultancies, including the Shigar Fort Residence and the Khaplu Palace, both of which were given UNESCO awards, for Excellence in Conservation and Restoration (2009) and Heritage Distinction (2012) respectively. Her latest design work was exhibited in Pale Sentinels at the Aicon Gallery, New York in 2018. She is also a widely published author. Professor Ismail is an associate of the National College of Arts, Lahore and was awarded the President's Pride of Performance for her work in visual art and education in 2014. She holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in textile design from the National College of Arts and Hornsey College of Art, London.
Janis Jefferies is emeritus professor of visual arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She is an artist, writer, and curator, and research fellow at the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles. She has edited numerous books and written chapter contributions on textiles, technology, performance, and practice research. She was one of the founding editors of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. She is coeditor of the Handbook of Textile Culture (2015), wrote the introduction to From Tapestry to Fiber Art: The Lausanne Biennials 1962–1995 (Fondation Toms Pauli Lausanne and Skira Editions Milan, 2017), was editor of TECHSTYLE Series 2.0: Ariadne's Thread (Hong Kong: MILL6 Foundation), and contributed a chapter called “Ravelling and Unravelling: Myths of Europe, Texts, Textiles and Political Metaphors” in Weaving Culture in Europe (Nissos Publications, 2017). With Professor Barbara Layne she is consultant on “The Enchantment of Textile” research project. Their work is supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and The Milieux Institute at Concordia University. http://research.gold.ac.uk/view/goldsmiths/Jefferies=3AJanis_K=2E=3A=3A.html.
Elizabeth Kalbfleisch is an art historian based in Toronto, Canada. She writes and teaches on Indigenous visual culture of Canada and the United States, as well as on craft, textiles, and contemporary art more broadly. Recent publications include contributions to Taking Aesthetic Action: Artistic and Sensory Participation Beyond Reconciliation (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014); Post‐disciplinarity and Sloppy Craft: A Critical Engagement (Berg, 2014); and Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture (UBC Press, 2010). She has taught art history, Canadian studies, and women and gender studies at several Canadian universities and was the 2011–2012 Research Fellow at the Canadian Museum of History. She holds a PhD in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester.
Alexandra Kokoli is senior lecturer in visual culture at Middlesex University, London and research associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg. She curated Su Richardson's retrospective exhibition Burnt Breakfast (Goldsmiths, 2012) and, with Basia Sliwinska, Home Strike (l'étrangère, 2018), and has published widely on feminism, art, and visual culture. Her books include The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice (2016); and (as editor) Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (2008); and The Provisional Texture of Reality: Selected Talks and Texts by Susan Hiller, 1977–2007 (2008). Kokoli is currently researching the legacies and visual aesthetics of feminist anti‐nuclear activism and the women's peace camp at Greenham Common, for which she has been awarded a Paul Mellon midcareer fellowship (2019).
Atta Kwami is an artist, art historian, and curator. He taught painting and printmaking for 20 years at the K.N.U.S.T. in Kumasi, Ghana. In 2007 he received a PhD in art history from the Open University, Milton Keynes in England for his work on contemporary Ghanaian artists, now published as Kumasi Realism, 1951–2007: An African Modernism (Hurst & Company, 2013). Kwami has also published articles in exhibition catalogs, scholarly volumes, and journals. Kwami was a visiting fellow at the Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Programme, Art and Museums in Africa (2012/2013). He has had solo/group exhibitions at the National Museum of Ghana, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Newark Museum, USA, and the British Museum.
Akiko Moriyama is a design journalist and professor in the Department of Design Informatics at Musashino Art University, Tokyo. Having graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music she joined the Japanese Patent Office in 1975 as an examiner in design law. She subsequently became editor‐in‐chief of Nikkei Design magazine before taking up her current post in 1998. Her publications as a coauthor include The Concise History of Japanese Modern Design (2003) and Complete Collection of the G‐Mark System (2007), and as sole author, Yukio Nakagawa: An Artist Who Has Devoted His Life to Flowers (2005), Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Beyond the Eye that Shapes (2010), and Junichi Arai: The Dream Weaver (2012). She wrote the Japanese‐English script for the play BENIBANA: The Flowering Spirit, performed in Japan between 2014 and 2019 and Finland in 2019.
Karin E. Peterson is currently serving as interim executive vice‐chancellor and provost for University of North Carolina School of the Arts in the USA, and holds a faculty position as professor of sociology at University of North Carolina, Asheville. As a sociologist of art, she concerns herself with questions of the production of cultural value, cultural entrepreneurship, and the sociology of aesthetics. Her research focuses on the strategies of collectors, museums, art dealers, and other actors in creating artistic and economic value.
John Picton is emeritus professor of African art in the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. He was previously employed by the British Museum (1970–1979) and by the Department of Antiquities (now the National Commission for Museums and Monuments) of the Federal Government of Nigeria (1961–1970). His research and publications interests include Yoruba and Edo (Benin) sculpture; masquerade; textile history; the interrelationship of traditions and practices in the Niger‐Benue confluence and lower Niger regions of Nigeria; and developments in sub‐Saharan visual practice since the mid‐nineteenth century.
Leisa Rundquist is an associate professor of art history at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Asheville, USA and an independent curator. Her publications and forthcoming book address the intersections of childhood, religious piety, and gender in the art of Henry Darger. Recent exhibitions include Betwixt and Between: Henry Darger's Vivian Girls (2017) and Social Geographies: Interpreting Space and Place (2014). New directions in her research explore curatorial strategies that construct the representation of marginalized artists and their artistic practices, specifically those categorized as “outsider” and self‐taught. Prior to her position at UNC Asheville, Rundquist completed her PhD at UNC Chapel Hill in 2007 and was curator at the South Bend Art Museum from 1990 to 2000.
Paul Sharrad taught postcolonial literatures at the University of Wollongong, Australia for many years, with a special interest in the Pacific. In addition to his many literary publications, he has coedited Postcolonialism and Creativity: Reinventing Textiles Volume 3 (Telos, 2004), and published “Cloth and Self‐definition in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother,” in Kunapipi, 26.1 (2004), “Translations: Texts and Textiles in Papua New Guinea” in The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience, edited by Susanne Küchler and Graeme Were (UCL Press, 2005), “Trade and Textiles in the Pacific and India” in Fabrics of Change: trading identities, exhibition co‐curated by Diana Wood Conroy & Emma Rutherford (University of Wollongong, 2004) and “Tapa and Text: Hybrid Technologies and Pacific (Re)Possession,” (edited by Phyllis Herda, Heather Young‐Leslie and Ping‐Ann Addo) in Pacific Arts, the journal of the Pacific Arts Association, New Series vols. 3,4, and 5 (2007).
Angela Sheng has been teaching art history at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada since 2005. Previously she curated Asian textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum while completing her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. She began working on interculturality along the Silk Road in 1996 as a participant in the Reuniting the Treasures of Turfan project, followed by curating the international exhibit Writing with Threads: Traditional Textiles of Southwest Chinese Minorities (2005–2008). In 2017 she received a five‐year Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada to research a new project on the nomadic contribution to knowledge transmission in the first millennium.
Chris Spring is an artist, curator, and writer (www.chrisspring.co.uk) based at the West London Art Factory. He has curated many exhibitions at the British Museum and other venues, all of which included textiles and featured work by contemporary artists, including The Sainsbury African Galleries (2001), La Bouche du Roi: Artwork by Romuald Hazoumé (2007), Social Fabric: Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa (2013), and South Africa, Art of a Nation (2016) with John Giblin. His books include Angaza Afrika: African Art Now (2008) (Winner of the ART BOOK AWARD for 2009), African Textiles Today (2012) (Winner: Choice [USA] award for outstanding academic title), African Art Close Up (2013), and South Africa, Art of a Nation (2016) with John Giblin. Chris is a trustee of the Africa Centre and of the October Gallery in London.
Virginia Gardner Troy is an art historian who examines the visual, technical, and contextual significance of textiles. She is interested in twentieth‐century designers who collected and admired non‐Western and ancient textiles. She has authored two books, The Modernist Textile: Europe and America 1890–1940 (2006), and Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain (2002), and also written articles and chapters on Appalachian weaving, weaving during the Cold War, Bauhaus textiles, Mary Hambidge, Marie Cuttoli and pictorial tapestry, the display of textiles, and the textile work of Fortunato Depero. Dr. Troy has a PhD in art history from Emory University, and is professor of art history at Berry College in Georgia (USA).
Lisa Vinebaum is a leading scholar of socially engaged, politically motivated fiber works by contemporary artists. Her research and scholarship also aims to decenter white dominant frameworks in the fields of fiber and textile history. Published writings include commissioned book chapters and essays in edited anthologies, academic journals, and exhibition catalogs, most recently Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change, Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm 1930‐present, and The Handbook of Textile Culture. Dr. Vinebaum is chair and associate professor of fiber and material studies, and affiliated faculty in art history, theory and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the associate editor of Textile: Cloth and Culture. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Social Fabrics: The Art of Community.
Lee Weinberg is a lecturer, researcher, writer, and curator. She graduated the practice‐led creative curating doctoral program at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2015. Her research focuses on contemporary curatorial definitions with regard to the preservation of material and nonmaterial culture with the advent of digital technologies and communication media. She has worked as an independent curator in the urban spaces of Hackney, London and Haifa, exploring the role of art in developing urban spaces and reinforcing local communities' identities and self‐awareness. Other interests include the feminist reading of digital art practices and the understanding of identity constructs as they appear in television and film. Dr. Weinberg works as a researcher and lecturer at the Haifa University in Israel, in Shenkar College of Engineering, Art and Design, Ramat, Gan, Israel, and at the Royal College of Art, London.
General Introduction
Textile Culture
Textiles function as records of a culture's history, mores, and values. As artifacts they are ubiquitous, interwoven into the quotidian and ceremonial practices of every culture, small scale and industrial, local and global (Weiner and Schneider 1989
