Weaving the spaces we still call home: Textiles, location, gender (and beyond).

Vortragsreihe im Studienjahr 2013/14: Stoff wechseln? Ein geschlechterkritischer Blick auf Material und Medium / Substantial Change? A Gender-Critical Look at Material and Medium

Strongly associated with craft, female labor and time consuming bodily engagement, textiles have often been envisioned, in the Euro-American cultural context, as a symbolically “feminine” material, and its production and manipulation as gender-specific. While feminist artistic practices of the sixties and seventies (and subsequently feminist art historical discourses) have revived the usage of textiles, younger generations of female artists use them in ways that defy a single interpretation, and which may or may not be connected to feminist politics.

“Weaving the spaces we still call home” aims to explore zones of intersection between the use of textile materials and the questioning of symbolic and material constructions of “home” and “belonging” in the work of a series of contemporary artists from different geographical and cultural locations. While discussing gender-specific connotations “sticking” to textiles, it will look at what happens when these materials are created or appropriated by both female and male artists in order to explore the complex making and unmaking of “home” as a place of safety, intimacy and memory in an increasingly “global” world.

Giulia Lamoni is currently developing a post-doctoral research project on gender perspectives in Portuguese and Brazilian contemporary art. She previously collaborated with the Musée National d’Art Moderne/ Centre Pompidou in Paris for the organization of the exhibition « elles@centrepompidou », curated by Camille Morineau. She obtained her PhD in 2008 at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, in Arts and Sciences of Art/ Aesthetics.

Francesca Zappia is an art historian and independent curator based in Paris. She is interested on questions related to memory and knowledge in contemporary art, and she is currently developing a website, called “past forward”, to present the diversity of artistic practices dealing with memory. She previously collaborated with French public art collections (FNAC – National Fund of Contemporary Art and FMAC – Municipal Fund of Contemporary Art of Paris) as well as an assistant curator with the François Pinault Collection in Paris.