joseph scissorhands: Antigone: Women in Fibre Art

Barbara Levittoux-Świderska (1933-2019) - Fire (Poźar), 1974 (detail)

In a week that celebrated International Women's Day it was a pleasure to visit an exhibition solely devoted to women artists. Antigone: Women in Fibre Art is a brief but very useful survey of European female fibre art practitioners that served to fill gaps in my knowledge of the genre. The exhibition is built around the work of Jagoda Buić who recently passed away, and that of Barbara Levittoux-Świderska. The title of the exhibition references Buić's work named after the heroine of Sophocles' Greek tragedy with its theme of individual action or free will and fate. Like Antigone, several of the artists here - Abakanowicz, Buić, Levittoux-Świderska and Pachuka opposed the prevailing views of textiles as decorative, feminine and being lower in the artistic hierarchy. They revolutionised textiles with techniques that involved weaving, knotting, plaiting, coiling and braiding unconventional materials such as horse hair, rope and fleece. I recently posted about the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz in the current retrospective of her work at Tate Modern (here), but it was to discover more about the huge, draped, openly woven net works of Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, and the beautifully arranged pleated, layered works of Jagoda Buić, as well as works by younger fibre artists that drew me to this exhibition. Equally as interesting is the work of Ewa Pachuka (1936 - 2020), which involves crocheting sisal, jute and hemp cords into three-dimensional human forms which resemble effigies or artificial skins. I found her piece - The Open Man (below) to be the most disturbing artwork in the exhibition. Younger, contemporary fibre artists carrying the torch for the genre are also represented here in the colourful, figures of Anna Perach which are equally contorted as those of Pachuka, but the eye is distracted by the vibrant tufts of patterned fabric which cover these bodies. Perach uses a technique called 'tufting' to cover her figures in a richly textural covering that resembles deep pile carpet to examine ideas of gender and identity. I couldn't help but draw comparisons to the textile figures of Louise Bourgeois seen last year in the show devoted to her textile works at the Southbank Centre (here). Lastly, but by no means least here, is the work of another young artist in Lithuanian Egle Jauncems, who creates wall-hung textile assemblages investigating among other things male power, and truth and appearances. I found her smaller layered works to be very reminiscent in feel in terms of colour and shape to the collages of Frances Davidson (here). Though small, this was a most enlightening exhibition and I'm sure the names Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, Jagoda Buić and Ewa Pachuka will no doubt crop up again in larger surveys of the fibre art medium.