top of page

weaving the spaces we still call home

Susana_Mendes_Silva_a bandeira.jpg
VOID

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. 

A lecture about an imaginary exhibition
Presented in collaboration with researcher Giulia Lamoni at the Universität für angewandte Kunst, Vienna | Jan. 2014
 
Artists: Azra Akšamija, Maja Bajević, Alighiero Boetti, Fawzy Emrany, Seulgi Lee, Susana Mendes Silva.  

Image: Susana Mendes Silva, Símbolo 
(2008) | Installation

Download: Lamoni G., Zappia F., Weaving the spaces we still call home, FKW // zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle kultur, #57 // October 2014 

bottom of page