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Revelations by Judy Chicago @ Serpentine North

Judy Chicago is an American art celebrity, a feminist superstar, a ‘trailblazing artist, author, educator, cultural historian’, a godmother of modern American feminist art.

Born Judith Cohen in 1939, Chicago struggled against the patriarchal condescension of the art world in the mid-1960s and eventually made a number of drastic decisions. The most striking was, in 1970, changing her name to adopt the city of her birth, thus erasing the gender-controlling aspects of going by either her father or husband’s names. She assembled collectives of women artists and founded the first feminist art program in the United States at California State University, Fresno.

The Dinner Party

Her most famous work is ‘The Dinner Party’ which she began in 1974 and can be said to summarise many of her concerns and practices.

‘The Dinner Party’ is not a painting or sculpture but an installation made of multiple elements: most obviously it consists of a large triangular table on which are 39 elaborate place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women such as Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf and so on.

So it is 1) an unconventional object, not painting, sculpture or quite installation, 2) setting out to address one of Chicago’s central concerns, which is the erasure and omission of eminent women from history, secular history, religious history, art history, all of it created and written by men.

It’s also a characteristic piece in that it was 3) a collaboration which required a lot of assistance from collaborating artists and assistants. Over the 8 years of its creation some 400 women worked on it, mostly volunteers.

Participants gather in The Dinner Party studio, Santa Monica, CA, 1978. Courtesy the Judy Chicago Visual Archive, Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center, the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

‘The Dinner Party’ is also characteristic in that 4) it confronts women’s sexuality head-on by having all of the 39 plates being vulvar in shape i.e. based on the shape and pattern of a woman’s genitals, a pattern she came to call ‘butterfly-vagina’ imagery. Broadly speaking, this is consists of a vertical oval representing the vaginal opening, with the folds of skin surrounding it (the labia minoria, labia majora and so on [according to the anatomy diagram I’m consulting]) represented in different ways, from folds of fabric to entirely schematic geometric patterns. Each of the 39 plates is a variation on the butterfly-vagina motif but vulvar imagery re-occurs frequently throughout Chicago’s oeuvre.

Hildegarde of Bingen plate line drawing from ‘The Dinner Party’ (1977) by Judy Chicago © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY Exhibition prints courtesy of the artist

‘The Dinner Party’ is also typical of Chicago’s work 5) in emphasising crafts, such as crockery and the needlework and fabrics which ornament the table, in foregrounding crafts which have traditionally, in the male-dominated art world, been relegated to a position inferior to painting and sculpture.

It is also characteristic in yet another way, in that 6) it went on tour, rather like a rock band, being shown in 16 venues in six countries on three continents to a viewing audience of 15 million. The very fact that the publicity around it emphasises these stats indicates the showbiz, world tour aspect of Chicago’s practice and reputation.

In this exhibition at Serpentine North ‘The Dinner Party’ has an alcove to itself, which, alas, doesn’t show the table itself (which has come to rest as a permanent installation at the Centre for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York) but displays various resources about it. So there are print versions of the designs on each plate, along with early colour studies of the banners used in the finished work and sketchbooks that reveal the working process and components that led up to it. There are three video screens showing interviews with members of the studio, documentary footage and a film that takes visitors on a tour of the work led by Chicago herself.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing the alcove containing sketches and videos relating to ‘the Dinner Party’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jo Underhill. Courtesy Judy Chicago and Serpentine

Maybe the last way in which ‘the Dinner Party’ is characteristic of Chicago’s work is that 7) it was made a long time ago, begun in 1974, half a century ago. Arguably, it speaks to a particular time and place and stage in the development of feminism as an ideology or collection of positions which have been eclipsed and superseded. Far from being occluded from history, nowadays you can’t go into a bookshop, turn on TV or radio, without encountering books, plays, films, documentaries and no end of other information about women in history, science, the arts and every other sphere of human activity. Which doesn’t detract from its power as a concept and a work and as a piece of feminist art history.

It’s interesting to read The Dinner Party Wikipedia article for the contemporary critical response among women critics and artists and then among Black women, to get a feel for how endlessly contentious these subjects are, and how the fiercest opposition often comes, not from the famous Patriarchy, but from members of your own movement.

Atmospheres

Talking of art from a long time ago, the second of Serpentine North’s ‘alcoves’ (or brick-lined passages) is devoted to an even older piece, or concept for multiple pieces, the use of coloured smoke.

Between 1968 and 1974, Chicago explored the male-dominated field of pyrotechnics and carried out a series of immersive, site-specific performances collectively known as ‘Atmospheres’. In these works Chicago moved right outside conventional artistic boundaries to use smoke as a medium to create expansive drawings in space. According to the curators:

Chicago saw ‘Atmospheres’ as a “gesture of liberation” that marked the release of colour previously contained within the “rigid structures” of her drawings and paintings and freed her from societal expectations.

She used smoke machines, fireworks, road flares and dry ice to ‘transform and soften the landscape’ and, crucially, to introduce ‘a feminine impulse into the environment.’ This would later become a central concern.

By their nature ephemeral, Chicago documented the smoke pieces through video and photography which is why a dozen or so photos and several videos projected onto hanging screens record the performances.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing the alcove/passage devoted to ‘Atmospheres’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jo Underhill. Courtesy Judy Chicago and Serpentine

Apparently, 40-plus years later, Chicago was invited to recreate or develop the idea of pyrotechnic art so that alongside the 70s footage there are films of much more recent events where, in what look like big festival-style events, she set off smoke displays and what look like pretty standard firework displays, at night, in American and European cities, to the whoops and cheers of delighted crowds.

Comparing these movies from 2019 and 2020 with the original small-scale, delicate and evocative films from the 1960s shows you how far American or Western culture has fallen, how so much that was novel or strange has been sucked into show business at VIP prices, with little or no space for strange, eccentric, individual gestures and thoughts.

The footage of naked young women painted red and green dancing in the desert holding smoke canisters in their hands are powerful not only because of their youth and beauty, but because their mysterious gestures, designed to invoke women-only rites and rituals, along with the very grainy quality of the old 16mm footage, hark back to a lost age of innocence and optimism.

Then (sweet, amateurish and interesting)

‘Smoke Bodies’ from ‘Women and Smoke’ by Judy Chicago (1972) Fireworks performance performed in the California Desert © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo courtesy of Through the Flower Archives Courtesy of the artist; Salon 94, New York; and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Now (slick, professional and boring)

‘Purple Poem for Miami’ by Judy Chicago (2019) Fireworks performance commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami in conjunction with the exhibition Judy ‘Chicago: A Reckoning, 2018 to 2019’© Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York Courtesy of the artist; Salon 94, New York; and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

‘Turning rebellion into money’ as the Clash predicted, 50 years ago.

Revelations

But despite The Dinner Party’s central place in Chicago’s oeuvre and biography, this exhibition is not about it. The exhibition is titled ‘Revelations’ because this is the title of a book Chicago started working on in the early 70s and added to throughout the period of the creation of ‘The Dinner Party’, but which only now, 50 years later, is finally being published.

The idea is that this book expressed fundamental feminist and religious beliefs which have underpinned Chicago’s practice ever since (at one stage it was titled ‘Revelations of the Goddess’). We are told that only recently has she found the time to revise and complete the book as a kind of illustrated manuscript, a little in the style of William Blake’s self-illustrated books. To quote the blurb:

‘Revelations’ draws on Chicago’s extensive research into goddess worship and women’s history, offering readers a radical retelling of mythological creation and sharing Chicago’s lifelong vision of a just and equitable world.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing a display case containing pages from the illuminated edition of ‘Revelations’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Not only did she complete it, but got it published. This exhibition is timed and designed to coincide with the official publication of ‘Revelations’ by quality art publisher Thames & Hudson. Which explains why the show a) displays selected pages from the final book b) is laid out according to the central concepts of feminist theology which Chicago develops in the book and c) of course, copies are stacked high for visitors to buy in the exhibition shop (or on Amazon).

Apparently, if you download the app using the QR code supplied on the wall labels, you can listen to Chicago reading excerpts from the book which vary as you walk around the gallery.

Feminist theology

‘Feminist theology’ I hear you ask? Yes, for although Chicago rejects the patriarchy and man-centric male control of the art world, of politics and the world in general, she nonetheless appears to believe in God.

As far as I could tell, this god is female. God is a woman. In this respect her thinking amounts to a mirror image of male theology: there is a God, but she is a woman and therefore created Woman first and Man simply to be her clumsy helpmate. Crucially – and a point she comes back to again and again – the most fundamental act of creation is female because it is giving birth. Only women give birth, in a shattering and dangerous and exhilarating process which has been both ignored, suppressed, rarely mentioned and never portrayed in patriarchal art. Addressing this glaring omission explains why the exhibition includes series of works addressing God the (Female) Creator and why the entire exhibition opens with a big, a really, really big wide frieze depicting the creation myth according to Judy, complete with text explaining the all-female creation of the universe in cod Biblical phraseology.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘In the Beginning’, her feminist creation myth (1982) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

This focus on the true, female nature of creation also explains why, later in the show, there’s a series of works depicting childbirth – not in realistically messy detail, not in blood-spattered photographs – but stylised into the mythological cartoon style Chicago developed and perfected in the later 1970s and 80s. This series is titled ‘The Birth Project’ and includes a number of finished works alongside preparatory drawings and sketches. Pretty much all of them show the act of birth from the business end, facing directly between a woman’s legs so as to see the parted thighs, the opening vulva and anus, with the breasts like two hills in the distance and, often, no head in sight.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘The Crowning’ (1983) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

The correlation between the female body and landscape is no accident – in this vision, women make the world and so are the landscape.

Evolution from abstract to cartoon style

The exhibition actually starts back before ‘The Dinner Party’ or ‘Atmospheres’ with a set of her earliest works, which are far more conventional drawings on paper consisting of lightly drawn geometric shapes shaded with pastel colours.

These are very soothing and calming. They reminded me a bit of the Hilma af Klimt abstracts shown at Tate Modern last year, or of the visionary drawings of Emma Kunz shown here at the Serpentine 5 years ago but much lighter and less cluttered than either. Simpler, airier. Maybe more like Agnes Martin.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing early drawings from the late 1960s) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Placed next to them are drawings from just a few years later which demonstrate a far more assertive use of colour, with the structure of the shapes more obviously defined, using bolder colours and with the grading of the colours from intense to pale, creating a more dynamic effect.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing early drawings from the early and mid-1970s © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

The curators make the point that the entire exhibition has a strong emphasis on Chicago’s drawings and sketches, maybe half the pieces here are drawings, and this is also the pretext for some quotes by Chicago on the centrality of drawing to her practice, before she gets near to the later, larger, more finished works.

Anyway I’m sharing these early pieces to highlight the next step in her development which is to treat human beings in much the same abstract shadow style, showing only the silhouette emphasised by dark shadowing, and using bold colours which shade away into pastel hues, which has the effect of making the images dynamic and, at the same time, simplified and cartoony.

‘Wrestling with the Shadow for Her Life’ from ‘Shadow Drawings’ (1982) by Judy Chicago © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY Courtesy of the artist

There are a dozen or so images like this and I liked them, probably because I like cartoons, I like strong defined outlines which is why, for example, I worship Degas. The flexible distorted postures of the human figures also appealed because they reminded me of both Matisse and Picasso who, in different ways, did something similar to the human body, turning it into bendy dancing outlines (for example Matisse’s The Dance, 1910). Probably there’s a strong feminist message to this image, as to all the others, but after a while I stopped reading the wall captions and just enjoyed the pictures.

There’s a subset of these which appear to address how horrible men are, a series titled ‘PowerPlay’ (1982 to 1987) which, as the curators put it, ‘interrogate notions of power, social conditioning, and the construct of masculinity’ – or, as a normal person might put it, are entertainingly comic cartoons.

So, for example, we have an imagine of a muscly man grasping a steering wheel which has morphed out of a version of planet earth which is going up in flames – presumably showing how toxic masculinity has instrumentalised the earth and is driving it down the road to ruin.

There’s a comic image of one of her shadow silhouette man with his willy hanging between his legs, letting rip a flow of yellow pee onto the earth. Yes folks, toxic men pissing all over nature (presumably because women don’t pee or, if they do, it’s in a discreet, non-toxic and environmentally friendly kind of way).

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing shadow drawings of toxic men from the early 1980s © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

Simplistic images conveying a simplistic message: man bad. Destroy environment. Woman good. Save planet.

The environmental turn

Which goes to show that, like many older artists, half-way through her career Chicago’s work began to incorporate environmental and green concerns. Probably it was there from the start, as the green movement was born around the same time as feminism and was part of the studenty-60s counterculture rebellion climate which Chicago came out of. But whatever the history of her engagement with the issue, this exhibition goes on from the cartoon men to show work in which she consciously focuses on green issues.

One wall holds 13 or so smallish prints, from 2013 and 2014, of endangered animals outlined in white on a jet black background, and each one is given a text, written in Chicago’s characteristic cursive script, pleading with us to save the planet.

‘Stranded’ by Judy Chicago in ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

These, we are told, are all part of the #CreateArtForEarth campaign which Chicago set up along with the artist Swoon and Jane Fonda (of all people) who, apparently already runs an environmental campaign called Fire Drill Fridays.

Judge for yourself but these images all seemed to me to be, well, er, a little amateurish. At about this point in the exhibition the thought occurred that a lot of Chicago’s mid-period and later art depends quite heavily on the worthiness of the cause as much as, or more than, its aesthetic quality.

A tell-tale indicator of this is the increasing presence – you might say dominance – of text in the images. By the 2010s many, if not most, of the works here contain texts which ‘educate’ – or hector and harangue – the viewer, depending on taste.

Anyway, you too can contribute to #CreateArtForEarth just by posting on social media using the hashtag. You can upload anything, paintings, photos, sculptures, writings, poems, symbols, every little helps, and you can see how this matches the collaborative and co-operational mindset which I pointed out 35 years earlier in the heady ‘Dinner Party’ days.

I don’t want to come over as unduly cynical but as I read all this it did strike me as a prime example of ‘slacktivism’, whose dictionary definition is: ‘the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment.’ Uptick ‘Save the planet’. Like ‘End consumption’. There. That’s my contribution.

Anyway, the shadow cartoon style I highlighted earlier is combined with the environmentalism in one of the most successful pieces here, ‘Rainbow Warrior’ from 1980, named after Greenpeace’s activist ship. Another of her stylised naked women, apparently giving birth to the creatures of the sea. (The ‘rainbow warrior’ is, apparently, an ocean goddess from Inuit mythology, so it’s not just a whimsical image but an ethnographically accurate one.)

‘Rainbow Warrior – for Greenpeace’ by Judy Chicago (1980) in ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North. Collection of Paul and Rhonda Gerson © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

Digression: 1930s posters

As I processed all these images of the human form simplified down to stylised silhouettes with the heavy use of shading and often multiple outlines as if echoing or mirroring the central one, plus the use of slogans or good causes – I knew I’d seen something similar before. It took me a while to realise they were reminding me of a certain type of poster from the 1930s, generally depicting armed struggle, the classical examples being from the Spanish Civil War, but sometimes Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR.

It tickled me that these images of muscle-bound, toxic male warriors are pretty much the last thing in the world Chicago would want to be associated with, but hopefully you can see the stylistic similarities. Not suggesting any kind of indebtedness, just the visual similarity.

Snapshot from Google Images showing cartoon figures relying on strong outlines, shadow, ‘echoes’ of silhouettes and simple colour palettes

What if women ruled the world?

The exhibition builds up to a finale in the very big, interactive and collaborative piece, ‘What if women ruled the world?’

The main product of this is a massive quilted banner covered in images and text, lots of text. It was a highly collaborative piece. Chicago formulated 10 or so ancillary questions to the main central one, such as [if women ruled the world] ‘Would men and women be equal?’, ‘Would buildings resemble wombs?’ and so on.

Rather mind-bogglingly the first person to answer all 11 questions ‘during a call to action at the ICA Miami in December 2022’ was Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the all-women Russian punk band, Pussy Riot. Her prompt and enthusiastic response resulted in her being recruited by Chicago, an inveterate collaborator, in this new project.

In the end thousands of people replied, from all round the world, and these responses were ‘digitally threaded’ together to create the finished tapestry. Here’s my photo of it in the Serpentine which shows how it is made out of panels. At the centre sits an embroidered portrait-shaped rectangle containing the master question. If you look closely you can see how scattered around the rest of the quilt are long narrow ‘letterbox’ panels, which contain the 10 ancillary questions. And all the rest of the quilt is made up of smaller, letter-shaped panels containing answers contributed by respondents around the world, most of whom are represented by photos of themselves.

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘What if women ruled the world?’ © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

You can see it in more detail, read more and watch the video, on the dedicated What if women ruled the world? website. (If you hover your cursor over the main image of the quilt it magnifies the individual panels so you can read the contributions and comments woven into it).

The exhibition here at the Serpentine includes, next to the main quilt, a set of decorated prints of each of the questions written out in Chicago’s attractive, cursive script.

A last-minute change

And with that you have completed your tour of the exhibition – laid out in Serpentine’s usual four long narrow galleries and 2 walk-through alcoves – and have arrived back at the massive frieze depicting her mythological depiction of the Female Goddess giving birth to the universe, which greeted us as we walked in the door.

But there is one last wrinkle. On the wall next to the quilt, Chicago has created a piece specially for this show. It uses what had, by the 1980s become her characteristic rainbow palette, using her trademark Prismacolor pens, across which is written a text in her (just as characteristic) cursive hand saying: ‘And God Created Life.’

Beneath this is a normal-sized print depicting God as a hermaphrodite, displaying the primary and secondary characteristics of both a woman and a man (i.e. a vulva and a penis).

Installation view of ‘Judy Chicago: Revelations’ at Serpentine North showing ‘And God Created Life?’ (2023) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by the author)

What??? Right next door is the huge frieze saying that God is a woman and created the universe using female techniques, body parts and substances (breast milk becoming rivers etc) and asserting that the fundamental act of creation, suppressed by millennia of patriarchy, is the unique ability of women to give birth. God. Woman. Universe.

But now, according to the curators:

Foregrounding a shift in the artist’s perspective from an inherently female position to an all-encompassing view, the exhibition culminates in ‘And God Created Life’ (2023). This is Chicago’s most recent work included in the exhibition and calls for an expanded and inclusive concept of God, one that is neither distinctly male or female.

Here, right on the very last wall, as it were on the last page of the book, in the last frame of the movie, with no further explanation, Chicago appears to revise and contradict pretty much everything the entire previous 50 years of her art was premised on. After spending 40 years telling us God is a woman now she’s telling us that…maybe our religious thinking should transcend the simplistic binary of male or female, for something less divisive and more inclusive…

It’s a weird curveball to throw right at the very end of the entire show and begs loads of questions which remain completely unanswered.

If you like vexatious questions about feminist mythology, God and the universe you can go away and worry about this puzzling turn of events at length. Or if, like me, you like pretty pictures and enjoy seeing how an artist’s style and ideas change and develop over time, then this a stimulating, often very beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes a bit meh, but always interesting exhibition – with a mysterious sting in the tail!

‘And God Created Life’ by Judy Chicago (2023) © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. Photo: © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York. Courtesy of the artist

And like all the shows at the two Serpentine galleries – it’s FREE! Go and enjoy, be inspired and, maybe, a little puzzled.

Related links

Other London exhibitions which featured Chicago

More Serpentine reviews

Feminist reviews

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Posted by Simon on May 25, 2024

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Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art @ the Barbican

Big and beautiful

This is a great exhibition, a huge and dazzling collection of contemporary fabric art from around the world, works large and small, incorporating a wide variety of techniques, bringing together images and traditions and colour palettes, stories and ideas from around the world.

Blood in the Grass, 1966 by Hannah Ryggen © Hannah Ryggen / DACS 2023. Photo by Kode / Dag Fosse

It brings together just over 100 artworks by 50 international practitioners. These include well-known names such as Faith Ringgold, Tracey Emin, Cecilia Vicuña, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Yinka Shonibare, alongside many less well-known figures. And it covers a very wide range of media, from intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations.

Textile as a medium

Textiles play an extraordinarily wide variety of roles in our everyday lives. They cover and protect us, engage our senses, trigger our memories, indicate our gender, display our beliefs. We are wrapped in cloth when we’re born and shrouded in it when we die and every day in between will be wearing some kind of fabric. I just towelled myself down after a shower, then slipped on some comfortable fleece trousers and a t-shirt, am sitting on a cotton-cushioned chair, later tonight will slip between a white cotton sheet and a patterned duvet cover. Fabrics are everywhere in our lives.

Exhibition aims

But Barbican exhibitions are never just about beautiful objects, they are always polemical and political, they’re always making a point. This one has two aims:

1) One is to challenge and question the way artistic work in fabrics has always played second fiddle to the fine arts i.e. painting and traditional sculpture, always been looked down on, often demeaningly referred to as ‘women’s work’, or slighted for having such close association with domestic and artisan production.

2) The second aim is very strongly political: every one of the artists has been chosen for the way they use textiles, fibre and thread with political goals – to challenge oppressive power structures, to commemorate the victims of state power and historical wrongs, to stand up for the weak and oppressed, to act as rallying cries or symbols of resistance to power.

The exhibition aims:

to shine a light on artists from the 1960s to today who have explored the transformative and subversive potential of textiles, harnessing the medium to ask charged questions about power: who holds it, and how can it be challenged and reclaimed?

to communicate vital ideas about power, resistance and survival.

And:

From intimate hand-crafted pieces to monumental sculptural installations, the works [gathered here] offer narratives of violence, imperialism and exclusion alongside stories of resilience, love and hope.

‘Hard-luck stories’

What this means in practise is that a lot of the works on display, no matter how beautiful or appealing at first glance, turn out to have harrowing and shocking inspirations or subject matter. For some reason I’ve been listening to the old Bob Dylan song, Black Diamond Bay. In the last verse the narrator cynically laments that:

Seems like every time you turn around
There’s another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear.

Well, that perfectly describes the exhibits here. All of them have darker sides, and you need quite a strong stomach to cope with some of the stories you read about.

For example, the very first room contains a big bold quilt by Tracey Emin. This recalls her famous quilted tent, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995’, and I immediately liked it because of the punk associations of the Union Jack. It also made me think of my daughter, a classic ‘school refuser’ who might well have said, with the artist, ‘No you listen – I’m not late – you’re lucky!’ All of which made me smile.

NO CHANCE (What a Year) 1999 by Tracey Emin © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2022, courtesy White Cube Photo by Stephen White

But then I read the wall label and discovered that this hand-stitched appliqué blanket expresses Emin’s feelings as a 13-year-old girl in 1977, the year a man raped her. Ah. Oh. Not so funny or entertaining now, is it? Now you understand the way the work’s sweary, confrontational text, cut out in felt and hand-stitched onto fabric, really comes from a place of great hurt and anger and vulnerability. God. Upsetting.

In a similar vein, I turned a corner into one of the upper gallery’s 12 alcoves and was immediately struck and attracted by the rich deep scarlet colouring of this wonderful piece of fabric, made all the more vibrant by the way it’s set against the jet-black background.

Installation view of ‘Luingamla Kashan’ by Zamthingla Ruivah (1990 to the present). Photo by the author

Until I read the wall label:

In 1986 a young woman in Northern India named Luingamla, a friend of the artist, was murdered by army officers who attempted to rape her. The officers walked free due to a law, a remnant of British colonial rule, that meant that armed forces were immune from being tried in civil courts. Student groups and the Tangkhul Shanao Long (Tangkhul Women’s Association) rallied to bring a case before the courts. They won the case in 1990, four years after her murder. Ruivah wove this keshan — a woollen sarong worn by men and women in the Naga Hills of Manipur, northeast India — to commemorate Luingamla’s path to justice. Since then, the design has been passed down through Naga communities across the region, with more than 6,000 women having produced over 15,000 of them. They have become a symbol of solidarity with the Naga resistance movement and the fight against state violence towards women.

Probably ‘hard luck story’ isn’t the correct term, but see what I mean? Every single artifact here has an upsetting or problematic inspiration or purpose.

Take the image I opened this review with, ‘Blood in the Grass’ by Hannah Ryggen. This turns out, on investigation, to be a visual depiction of the US war in Vietnam. Once you read the wall label you learn that the face at the top right is a stylised portrait of US President Lyndon B. Johnson, who presided over the disastrous escalation of the war in the late 1960s. And that the green rectangles represent the lush fields of Vietnam while the grid of red lines represents the blood shed by the massacred Vietnamese. Ah.

Or take this massive, wall-sized piece by Tau Lewis, ‘‘The Coral Reef Preservation Society’ which, at first sight, looks like lots of sea creatures frolicking against a patchwork of blue fabrics representing the ocean, a fairly harmless work you might find hanging in a sixth-form art block.

‘The Coral Reef Preservation Society’ by Tau Lewis (2019) © Tau Lewis, courtesy the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles

But in fact:

This patchwork quilt in part pays homage to the enslaved women and children who lost their lives during the Middle Passage (the enforced transport of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). Reimagining them as sea creatures, Lewis transforms the trauma that lies in underwater territories into spaces of regeneration and emancipation.

There’s a lot about the historical crime of the slave trade, which feeds through into more up-to-date crimes against Black people and invocations of the Black Lives Matter movement.

‘american Juju for the Tapestry of Truth’ by Teresa Margolles (2015) Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich/ Paris

Apparently, artist Teresa Margolles often uses material residues from murder sites in her art. This patchwork tapestry was laid on the ground at the site in New York where Eric Garner, a 43-year-old Black man, was placed in an illegal chokehold and killed by New York police.

It’s one of a pair of works by Margolles which are laid flat on lightboxes like the bodies of the murdered placed on autopsy tables. The works were made collaboratively with embroiderers who were close to the victims. Members of the Harlem Needle Arts cultural arts institute made the work commemorating Garner’s death, a patchwork which also honours other African American victims of police brutality.

So, to recap: this is very far indeed from being a collection of pretty textiles. Every work tells a story and many of the stories are harrowing and upsetting.

Favourites

Here are some of the works I liked most, based more on their actual appearance and the impact they made on me than the righteousness of the issues they address. I add the curators’ explanations in italics.

‘TIKAR/MEJA’ by Yee I-Lann (2018)

Installation view of ‘TIKAR/MEJA’ by Yee I-Lann (2018) Photo by the author

In TIKAR/MEJA, images of tables are woven into the mats through the weft and warp of colourful strips of pandan leaves, using the same techniques Yee’s ancestors used for centuries. The table serves as a symbol for the imposition of a patriarchal and colonial worldview onto a population, while the mat signifies a more democratic and mutual power, imbued with ancestral knowledge and traditions. This display shows twelve works from a series of sixty that can be displayed in different configurations.

‘To Teach or to Assume Authority’ by Sarah Zapata (2018 to 2019)

Installation view of ‘To Teach or to Assume Authority’ by Sarah Zapata (2018 to 2019) Photo by the author

‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.’ This passage from the Bible inspired the title of Zapata’s first sprawling ‘shag’ sculpture. Its structure references the architecture of the Nazca ceremonial site Cahuachi, where a huge woven cloth was excavated in 1952. She transforms the ruin into a landscape of vibrant latch-hooked threads, refusing any risk that this ancestral site might be lost to time. The undulating form subverts the notion of the rug as floor-based: Indigenous communities in Peru only began using textiles on the floor after the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century.

Incidentally, the Zapata work raised a basic question about the exhibition which is that I really, really wanted to reach out, touch, stroke and run my hands over lots and lots of the works here. The curators make it worse by repeatedly emphasising how warm and intimate and comforting so many different types of fabric are – only to place around every single one of them, loud alarms which are triggered if you step or even put your hand beyond the black bars on the floor. Frustrating.

As usual the show is spread over the Barbican’s two floors. The 12 or so upstairs rooms have some great pieces, but the most impressive space is the big room downstairs, which contains the Zapata piece, a typical Abakan by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose major retrospective at Tate Modern I reviewed not so long ago.

Quipu Austral’ by Cecilia Vicuña (2012)

It also contains maybe the single most striking work in the show, a forest of slender, brightly coloured fabrics suspended from the ceiling and billowing gently as people walked past them, created by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña.

Installation view of ‘Quipu Austral’ by Cecilia Vicuña (2012) photo by the author

The idea of hanging fabrics is familiar to anyone who caught Vicuña’s recent installation at Tate Modern. According to the curators:

Lengths of knotted, unspun wool stream down from the ceiling, accompanied by the sounds of Vicuña chanting poems related to water, for which thread is a metaphor in Andean culture. This monumental work, which Vicuña describes as a ‘poem in space’, embodies her deep engagement with the ancient Andean form of the quipu (meaning ‘knot’ in the Quechua language): a system of ‘writing’ with knots. This ritualistic way of communicating was understood to connect its makers to the cosmos.

In 1583, following the Spanish conquest, quipu were banned and ordered to be destroyed. For Vicuña, reviving the quipu is ‘an act of poetic resistance’ — it is ‘a way to remember, its potential involving the body and the cosmos at once.’

Quipu Austral was commissioned for the 18th Biennale of Sydney in 2012. Proposing the work as a ‘prayer for the union of the world’, Vicuña found poetic resonances between the ancient Indigenous peoples of South America and Australia, connecting their world views of exchange, equality and freedom. This included the parallel oral traditions of the Andean concept of the cosmographic ceque (meaning ‘line’) and the Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’ songlines, as metaphysical maps honouring the life-giving force of earth, water and song. The vibrant colours of the wool are based on the hues found in both Aboriginal Australian rock paintings and Andean weavings.

Igshaan Adams

Mind you, the upstairs has a very impressive room, probably the best single space, filled with works by Igshaan Adams. It’s an installation consisting of several works. From the ceiling hang ‘prayer clouds’ gassy feeling conglomerate structures made from gold and silver link chain, copper , gold and silver wire, gold chain and spray paint, polyester braid, metal charms, copper, brass and silver wire, wood, plastic and crystal beads, cowrie and sea snail shells, galvanised steel and wood centre, gold and silver link chain and clear lacquer spray paint. Quite a mix!

Installation view of the Igshaan Adams room. Photo by the author

Through the ‘foggy’ effect of these metal imbroglios you see a more conventional rectangular work hanging on the wall. This is ‘Heideveld’ (2021) made of wood, painted wood, plastic, glass, stone, precious stone, metal and bone beads, shells, nylon and polyester rope, cotton fabrics, wire and cotton twine. It was worth going right up close to the surface of this to see the extraordinary range of material which have been used and the awesome amount of work it must have taken.

Close-up view of ‘Heideveld’ by Igshaan Adams (2021) Photo by the author

This installation by Igshaan Adams grows out of his expanded practice of weaving and his exploration of so-called ‘desire lines’ in post-Apartheid South Africa, the informal pathways that are created over time through footfall, often acting as shortcuts. He understands these lines as ‘symbolic of a collective act of resistance by a community who have historically been segregated and marginalised through spatial planning. Intentionally or not, these pathways remain symbolic of carving out one’s own path, collectively or individually.’

‘Family Treasures’ by Sheila Hicks (1993)

Although the works the curators have chosen all too often commemorate murder, oppression, racism, sexism, misogyny and so on, there are occasional moments of happiness, like the sun breaking through the clouds on a gloomy winter’s day. One such piece is ‘Family Treasures’ by Sheila Hicks.

‘Family Treasures’ by Sheila Hicks (1993) © Sheila Hicks, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2023, courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

In ‘Family Treasures’, Hicks draws upon the intimacy of textile: we all wear it, we invest it with feelings and it is literally the texture of our everyday lives. While in Amsterdam in 1993, she asked close friends and family members to surrender their most beloved items of clothing, which she wrapped in colourful yarn and thread. Each tightly-wound bundle is a reminder of what we hold dear.

Hicks is a leading member of the fibre arts movement in Europe and the United States in the 1960s and 70s, in which mostly women artists experimented with fibre and thread as a legitimate medium for art. Hicks’ work is often sculptural, playful and harnesses a variety of scales — from the small and intimate to the monumental — challenging the idea that textiles are flat, decorative and wall-based. Her work has been motivated by the acknowledgement that fibre permeates peoples’ lives. She has commented: ‘you can’t go anywhere in the world without touching fibre.’

Sweet idea, huh? And very valid point that fabric art needn’t be flat and wall-based, as many, many of the works here amply demonstrate.

Hammock by Solange Pessoa (1999 to 2003)

‘Hammock’ (part of ‘Four Hammocks’) by Solange Pessoa (1999 to 2003) Courtesy of Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington DC. Photo by Chi Lam

‘Hammock’ was created in response to the land of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where Pessoa grew up. Textiles — in the form of rags and canvas — act as a carrier for living and decaying matter. Here fabric bags, stained with the orange soil that fills them, resemble voluminous, lumpen bodily forms that evoke internal and external organs, as well as life and death. They could be breasts, uteruses, entrails, testicles. In Brazil, cadavers are often transported in hammocks instead of stretchers.

Conclusion

I’ve covered 11 of the 50 exhibitors. That leaves 39 more for you to discover in this big, colourful, wonderful but – be warned – sometimes upsetting and challenging show. If it sets out to prove that work in fabric can be every bit as interesting as more traditional ‘fine art’, then it triumphantly succeeds. And if it wishes to show that this kind of work also lends itself to collaborative, community-based responses to brutality, abuse of power and exploitation, then it also succeeds.

Lastly, I haven’t devoted enough time to considering the actual techniques of quilting, sewing, knitting, collaging and assembling which are on display throughout the show. That’s because I’m not really qualified to do so, but the friend I went with hardly read any of the labels (thus sparing herself quite a lot of distress) and instead was riveted by the variety and inventiveness of technical skills on display.

I haven’t really dwelt enough on the artistry, skill and inventiveness which has gone into so many of these pieces. It’s worth visiting for anyone interested in fabric, quilting, sewing, decorating and texture-based art for that reason alone. Quite apart from the loud blare of the political stories and issues, here is a collection of quietly fastidious and intricate artistry.

Detail from ‘Dylegued (Entierro)’ by Teresa Margolles (2013) Photo by the author

Participating artists

  • Pacita Abad (The Philippines/USA)
  • Magdalena Abakanowicz (Poland)
  • Igshaan Adams (South Africa)
  • Ghada Amer (Egypt/France)
  • Arpilleristas (Chile)
  • Mercedes Azpilicueta (Argentina)
  • Yto Barrada (Morocco)
  • Kevin Beasley (USA)
  • Sanford Biggers (USA)
  • Louise Bourgeois (France / USA)
  • Diedrick Brackens (USA)
  • Jagoda Buić (Croatia)
  • Margarita Cabrera (Mexico / USA)
  • Feliciano Centurión (Paraguay)
  • Judy Chicago (USA)
  • Myrlande Constant (Haiti)
  • Cian Dayrit (The Philippines)
  • Tracey Emin (UK)
  • Jeffrey Gibson (USA)
  • Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic (The Netherlands / Panama and The Netherlands / Yugoslavia)
  • Harmony Hammond (USA)
  • Sheila Hicks (USA)
  • Nicholas Hlobo (South Africa)
  • Yee I-Lann (Malaysia)
  • Kimsooja (South Korea)
  • Acaye Kerunen (Uganda)
  • José Leonilson (Brazil)
  • Tau Lewis (Canada)
  • Ibrahim Mahama (Ghana)
  • Teresa Margolles (Mexico)
  • Georgina Maxim (Zimbabwe)
  • Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (Poland)
  • Mrinalini Mukherjee (India)
  • Violeta Parra (Chile)
  • Solange Pessoa (Brazil)
  • Loretta Pettway (Gee’s Bend) (USA)
  • Antonio Pichillá (Guatemala)
  • Faith Ringgold (USA)
  • LJ Roberts (USA)
  • Zamthingla Ruivah (India)
  • Hannah Ryggen (Norway)
  • Tschabalala Self (USA)
  • Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (UK)
  • Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon)
  • Angela Su (Hong Kong)
  • Lenore Tawney (USA)
  • T. Vinoja (Sri Lanka)
  • Cecilia Vicuña (Chile)
  • Billie Zangewa (Malawi / South Africa)
  • Sarah Zapata (Peru / USA)

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by Simon on February 18, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on February 18, 2024

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