Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today
Cultural Threads considers contemporary artists and designers who work at the intersection of cultures and use textiles as their vehicle. Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which can result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere, are more pertinent to society today than ever. So too are the layers of history – often overlooked – behind the objects that make up our material world.

The roots of postcolonial theory lie in literature and have, in the past, been communicated through dense academic jargon. Cultural Threads breaks with what can read as impenetrable rhetoric to show the rich visual diversity of craft and art that engages with multiple cultural influences. Many of these objects exist in an in-between world of their own, not wholly embraced by the establishments of art, nor functional objects in the conventional sense of craft.

Cultural Threads is an exploration of contemporary textiles and their relationship with postcolonial culture. However, the postcolonial thinking examined here shares with craft an interest in the lived, rather than the purely theoretical, giving a very human account of the interactions in between craft and culture.

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Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today
Cultural Threads considers contemporary artists and designers who work at the intersection of cultures and use textiles as their vehicle. Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which can result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere, are more pertinent to society today than ever. So too are the layers of history – often overlooked – behind the objects that make up our material world.

The roots of postcolonial theory lie in literature and have, in the past, been communicated through dense academic jargon. Cultural Threads breaks with what can read as impenetrable rhetoric to show the rich visual diversity of craft and art that engages with multiple cultural influences. Many of these objects exist in an in-between world of their own, not wholly embraced by the establishments of art, nor functional objects in the conventional sense of craft.

Cultural Threads is an exploration of contemporary textiles and their relationship with postcolonial culture. However, the postcolonial thinking examined here shares with craft an interest in the lived, rather than the purely theoretical, giving a very human account of the interactions in between craft and culture.

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Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

by Jessica Hemmings
Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

by Jessica Hemmings

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Overview

Cultural Threads considers contemporary artists and designers who work at the intersection of cultures and use textiles as their vehicle. Ideas about belonging to multiple cultures, which can result in a sense of connection to everywhere and nowhere, are more pertinent to society today than ever. So too are the layers of history – often overlooked – behind the objects that make up our material world.

The roots of postcolonial theory lie in literature and have, in the past, been communicated through dense academic jargon. Cultural Threads breaks with what can read as impenetrable rhetoric to show the rich visual diversity of craft and art that engages with multiple cultural influences. Many of these objects exist in an in-between world of their own, not wholly embraced by the establishments of art, nor functional objects in the conventional sense of craft.

Cultural Threads is an exploration of contemporary textiles and their relationship with postcolonial culture. However, the postcolonial thinking examined here shares with craft an interest in the lived, rather than the purely theoretical, giving a very human account of the interactions in between craft and culture.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781350171756
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 11/12/2020
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 8.70(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jessica Hemmings is Professor of Craft at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is Visiting Professor with the Doctoral School of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary (2022), the Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands (2020–2023) and a member of the editorial boards of Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture and Craft Research. Jessica is the author of Yvonne Vera: the Voice of Cloth (2008), Warp & Weft (Bloomsbury, 2012), and the editor of In the Loop: Knitting Now (2012) and Cultural Threads (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Artists' Statements
Julie Ryder: Reflections on Charles Darwin's South Pacific (Australia)
Jorge Lizarazo and Hechizoo: Colombian Voyages and Explorations (Colombia)
Cecilia Vicuña: QUIPUing from Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia (Chile)
Elaine Reichek: Revisiting a Postcolonial Kinderhood in America (USA)
Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody: African Design Exported (South Africa)
Chapter Two: Dutch Wax Resist Textiles: Roger Gerards, Creative Director of Vlisco, and Jessica Hemmings (National College of Art & Design, Dublin, Republic of Ireland)
Chapter Three: An Imagined Africa: Stories told by Contemporary Textiles, Jessica Hemmings (National College of Art & Design, Dublin, Republic of Ireland)
Chapter Four: Weaving, Tradition and Tourism in Ghana: “The End of Skill”, Mamle Kabu (Ghana)
Chapter Five: Can Pakeha Make Customary Maori Art? A Conversation in New Zealand with Weaver Margaret White and Damian Skinner (New Zealand)
Chapter Six: Crafting Difference: Art, Cloth and the African Diaspora, Christine Checinska (University of East London, UK)
Chapter Seven: From Brixton to Mostar: Social Practice Through Textiles, Françoise Dupré (Birmingham City University, UK)
Chapter Eight: A Post-Slavery Reading of Cotton: Lubaina Himid (University of Central Lancashire, UK) in conversation with Sabine Broeck and Alice Schmid (both of the University of Bremen, Germany)
Chapter Nine: Contemporary Textile Imagery in Southern Africa: a Question of Ownership, Sarah Rhodes (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK)
Chapter Ten: Social Sutra: A Platform for Ethical Textiles in Partnerships Between Australia and India, Kevin Murray (Australia)

Index

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