Text and Textiles | OSK Seminar 2024-2025
Dates & locations: Seminar 1 – Friday November 22, 13:00 – 16:00 (OMHP E1.08) + Visit exhibition Unravel Stedelijk | Seminar 2 – Friday November 29, 13:00 – 16:00 (OMHP C2.23) | Seminar 3 – Friday, December 3 13:00 – 16:00 (OMHP E0.13) | Seminar 4 – Friday December 13, Workshop (tbc) OMHP C2.23
Open to: OSK ReMa students and PhD researchers
Credits: 2,5 EC
Teacher: Sonia de Laforcade & Hanneke Grootenboer
Instruction language: English
Deadline for signing up: 15 November
Register via the website and send a short letter of motivation to osk-fgw@uva.nl.
Course Description:
Weaving, embroidering or sewing has long been destined to a place in the margins of art history. Traditionally, it has been considered a mere female accomplishment, and (as a result) understood as a craft rather than an act of creation. Objects made of textile as a gendered material usually have been given a subordinate place in museum collections and in art historical literature. This marginal position, however, has provided handwork with a subversive force, and its users with a space of rebellion. Already in antiquity did figures such as Philomena and Penelope find forms of self-expression through needlework and weaving so as to narrate their stories of oppression. Samplers with letters in cross-stitch, central to pre-modern female education, often display autobiographical marks. In the 1970s, feminism was partly shaped by knitting while AIDS activism in the 1990s gained visibility through quilt making. In the past decade, contemporary art has seen a revival of the political potential of sewing and knitting. This has resulted in an increasing number of art historical publications on the (early modern) history of needlework or lacemaking as well as a renewed interest in early 20th century female artists who were working with fabric and fiber such as Anni Albers and Hannah Ryggen.
In this seminar we will discuss the current significance of textiles as a form of expression by reading classic texts and recent art criticism. Our focus will be on the relation between text and textile—a connection famously made by Roland Barthes when he compared a text to a tapestry of citation. Our objective is to explore the ways in which textile practices have given underrepresented groups a voice, a form of self-authentication, in the past as well as in the present. Special attention will be given to the relation between technology and handicraft. We start our discussion in the Stedelijk Museum with the exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art. In the seminars, we will place the politics of contemporary textiles in the larger history of art, and investigate the imagery of examples from the 17th and 18th century as well, including imagery of women doing handwork. Readings may include texts by Sadie Plant, Rozsika Parker, Julia Bryan-Wilson, T’ai Smith, Anni Albers, Cecilia Vicuña, and Cadence Kinsy.
Contact:
Sonia de Laforcade | sonia.delaforcade@ru.nl
Hanneke Grootenboer | h.grootenboer@uva.nl
Schedule:
Seminar 1 | Friday November 22 | 13:00 – 16:00 + Visit exhibition Unravel Stedelijk
Seminar 2 | Friday November 29 | 13:00 – 16:00
Seminar 3 | Friday, December 3 | 13:00 – 16:00
Seminar 4 | Friday December 13 | Workshop (tbc)