weaving the spaces we still call home

This lecture – part of the programme Substantial Change? A Gender-Critical Look at Material and Medium, organised by the University of Applied Art in Vienna in 2013-14 – was articulated as an imaginary exhibition, and aimed 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, and asymmetrically, ‘global’ world. 
 
The textile artworks discussed here – whose feminist genealogies are envisioned as non-exclusive – are loaded with local values and global implications, while they are also imagined as an intimate means to look at ‘home’ – as house, affective community or national identity – from afar, either temporally, spatially or critically.