Textiles, although temporarily dethroned by oil painting from the top of the hierarchy of Western art, remained highly prestigious right through the Renaissance in Europe, and they have remained so continuously in other cultures. Now embraced by a significant number of contemporary artists, the medium features in four North Texas exhibitions that highlight both prehistoric and contemporary work.
Dallas Museum of Art
At the Dallas Museum of Art, “Creatures and Captives: Painted Textiles of the Ancient Andes” begins with the museum’s yearslong efforts to research and conserve its fragment of the “Prisoner Textile,” engagingly related by curator Michelle Rich in an informative brochure that accompanies the show.
So-called because of its depiction of disconcertingly cheerful-looking naked and bound captives, the DMA’s “Prisoner Textile” is one piece of an originally 80-foot-long painted weaving whose segments are now scattered among 10 museums. For this show, the DMA borrowed the segment owned by the Menil Collection in Houston to hang along with its own segment, rounding out the gallery with 11 other pieces from the Chimú and Chancay cultures to provide context.
The dry environment of coastal Peru had a remarkably fortunate effect in preserving fragile cloths that would otherwise have long since rotted away. (Some of the pieces on view date from as early as A.D. 800-1000.) Although conservation science can reveal a great deal about the composition, technique and use of the artifacts, in the absence of written records, one is left to infer their meaning by looking and speculating.
The “Prisoner Textile” certainly seems to celebrate the conquest and subjugation of enemies, which would have taken place during the heyday of the Chimú culture before it was swallowed up by the Inca superpower, soon to be conquered in turn by the Spanish. The other pieces, however, are less clear-cut. Most prominent are stylized animal figures (birds, snakes and otherwise), stretched and exaggerated in shape so as to form repeating geometric patterns, creating a bewitching Picasso-meets-Pac-Man effect reminiscent of prehistoric Eurasian art that uses similar principles.
Dallas Contemporary
Meanwhile, “You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry” at Dallas Contemporary sets itself firmly against what it calls the “simplified ethnographic categorizations” that typically govern the presentation of prehistoric and historic textiles. The more than 30 large works by an international roster of artists, organized by high-profile Mexico-based curator Su Wu, nicely fill out DC’s cavernous exhibition space, a sign that the place is thriving under the shrewd leadership of executive director Lucia Simek. Like the New Museum in New York, and the Blaffer and Contemporary Art Museums in Houston, DC belongs to the species of noncollecting contemporary art museum known as a kunsthalle, meaning that it lives or dies by its exhibition program.
Despite the contrast drawn at the outset with traditional presentations, a viewer can notice parallels between the contemporary works and those presented at the DMA, for example in the prominence of animals in Candice Lin’s Papaver somniferum and Caroline Achaintre’s Seeker; in scenes of conflict in Christina Forrer’s Untitled (on brown background); or in repeating geometric patterns in Melissa Cody’s Motherboard Vibrations.
Two aspects of the work at DC, however, set it decisively apart from earlier works (such as those at the DMA). One is the incursion of electronic media and technology into the practice, most visibly in works by Analia Saban and Goshka Macuga.
The other is a self-consciously critical perspective toward inherited traditions and imagery, as in the works by Cody, Lin and Sanam Khatibi. Lin researches “plants imbricated in the histories of slavery and coolie labor,” according to the wall text, while Khatibi uses Western iconography “wrested from the authority of a church or sin.” And Cody, a fourth-generation Navajo weaver and enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, draws from the style of the blankets issued to the Navajo by the U.S. Army during their forced relocation to New Mexico in the 1860s. The overall sense of questioning and ambiguity in the show, reflecting what its announcement describes as “our current state of wonder and uncertainty,” contrast with the directness of the prehistoric works at the museum.
Liliana Bloch Gallery
The critical use of textiles is also central to two shows at Liliana Bloch Gallery. “Our Place in These Worlds” is a sharp-edged collaborative exhibition by three Central American artists, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Antonio Pichillá and Simón Vega, who each wrestle with issues of politics and justice. Alongside this show are selected works by Kelly Tapia-Chuning, a young interdisciplinary artist showing in Texas for the first time. Throughout the gallery, the art of textile-making is deployed as a metaphorically rich practice in and of itself and placed within installations that take a cold look at formations of power and oppression.
For instance, Lam’s MARICAribe (whose title makes a salty Spanish-language wordplay) is an installation of pink flags, made by the artist’s mother and himself, placed on a beach in Cuba to indicate the eight Caribbean states in which homosexuality is illegal. Pichillá’s video Weaving the Landscape documents how the artist spotted a tangle of bare logs emerging from the surface of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, noticed its resemblance to the weaving machine he uses for his work and wove a series of fabrics through the logs “as a tribute to the four colors of corn.”
Tapia-Chuning’s poignant, whisper-thin works are described as “dismantled serapes,” pierced by copper nails that stretch them across the walls, economically and indirectly evoking conquests and trophies of war. A millennium after the ancient Andean works at the DMA, the tender, tactile intimacy of woven fabrics continues to be troubled by their testimony to the darkness that lurks within the human heart.
Details
“You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry” is on view through Oct. 12 at Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass St. Open Thursday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. Call 214-821-2522 or visit dallascontemporary.org.
“Esvin Alarcón Lam, Antonio Pichillá and Simón Vega: Nuestro lugar en estos mundos/Our Place in These Worlds” and “Kelly Tapia-Chuning: Selected Works” are on view through Oct. 30 at Liliana Bloch Gallery, 4741 Memphis St. Open Thursday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment. Free. Call 214-991-5617 or visit lilianablochgallery.com.
“Creatures and Captives: Painted Textiles of the Ancient Andes” is on view through Feb. 22 at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St. Open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. Call 214-922-1200 or visit dma.org.
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