studio Donna van Milligen Bielke

Exhibition: Unravel, The power and politics of textiles in art
Date London: feb 2024 – sept 2024
Date Amsterdam: sept 2024 – jan 2025 
Location: Barbican Centre London & Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Spatial design: Ard de Vries Architects & Studio Donna van Milligen Bielke
Curators: Amanda Pinatih (Stedelijk) and Lotte Johnson and Wells Fray-Smith (Barbican)
Graphics: atelier Dyakova
Contracter London: Raskl
Contracter Amsterdam: Fiction factory
Photography London: Jo Underhill
Photography Amsterdam: Peter Tijhuis

In Unravel, artists from around the world present extraordinary artworks, from large-scale, colorful and expressive installations, to delicate and intimate pieces about love, resilience, power, and resistance. The group show features over a hundred works by 45 artists, including such famous names as Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks, and Tracey Emin, but also younger artists.

Textiles are the new way to tell stories in art. Textiles are a vital part of everyday life. They cover and protect you, stimulate your senses, trigger memories, represent your tastes and beliefs. Textiles have always been an under-examined medium in art history, but have recently been rediscovered by artists as a way to tell tales of love, resilience, power, and resistance. The colorful and extraordinary artworks in the group exhibition Unravel are radical in both form and content, showcasing a wide range of forms, scales, techniques, and perspectives. Some draw on age-old techniques, while others utilize new and experimental processes. Each of these artists uses fabric and thread to tell their personal histories, which also speak to current socio-political themes.