OFLUXO

If the integration of textile into the history of 20th century art constituted a major factor in the reversal of the so-called “dominant categories” – whether it be the upheaval of artistic and aesthetic hierarchies, feminist emancipation or Western decentering – what is the situation today?

Stemming from the knot as a symbol of connectivity and constraint, but also the elementary pattern of fabric, the group exhibition Stitches: Scènes, corps, décors looks at the use of this ductile technique in the Swiss artistic scene in recent decades. Questioning the appeal of textile in contemporary practices and its subversive power, the exhibition explores the intimate relationships that the material holds with the body and its spaces of representation.

35 emerging and established artists and collectives are invited to dialogue around the notions of decor, stage, roles, and the representation of the self. Stitches: Scènes, corps, décors examines the ambivalent relationship between textiles and art through the prism of intertwined and complementary axes.

Associated with the decorative and furniture setting, textile is embedded in the domestic, in everyday use. The private invites itself into the exhibition, contextualising the home as a space of comfort, shelter or confinement. Composed of object-works (beds, carpets, tables, decorations, windows), the collective and disparate “furnishings” of the space disturbs the principle of intimacy inherent to the domestic sphere, and questions shared environments and identities. Occupying the walls, floor and ceiling, the works interact with the architecture, drifting away from their functionality as objects. They also allude to a set of historical references tied to the breakdown of notions such as the decorative, craft and design.

When the home becomes the stage, garments become the costumes, objects the props, and decors a set. Curtains open and the space for public representation awakes, bringing with it fiction and storytelling. By embodying and diverting stage codes, the works explore the staging of the self and its relationship to theatricality and performativity. A tension arises from the expectation of an activation or its traces. Open sets are laid bare, without backstage, beginning nor end, and textile appears as a revealing element, triggering mobility and metamorphosis.

The exhibition is also built around a multiplicity of tri and bidimensional bodies or “personae” – a Latin term used to define ancient theatre’s masks, often associated with archetypes and their role in society. Bodies and visitors hence meet in a collective narrative, mingling between presence and absence, mythical and familiar figures, portraits and self-portraits. A crowd of anthropomorphic, mutant, abstract, flawed and glitched beings unfolds and summons up a frontal relationship to visitors. Fabric composes and conceals these bodies; it assembles and separates them.

By contrast and affinity, the works form ties and creates a temporary joint community – an interlace that nourishes a formal, tactile, and narrative dialogue between abstraction and figuration, ready-made and know-how, stages, bodies, and decors. The artists meet in a nodal setting linking intimacy and extimacy, constraint and liberation, emancipation and domestication. From suture stitch to sewing stitch, carnal and woven materials respond to each other, navigating through the private, scenic, and social spheres.