Sew Subversive

Throughout human history, textile creations have been perceived as more avocation than art form.

Weaving, quilting, knitting, crocheting, and embroidery were primarily performed by women, dismissed as ‘decorative’ or ‘craft’, and therefore excluded from the canon of fine art until relatively recently.

Contemporary gallery venues have begun to recognize thread, yarn, and fabric for their expressive power: as a medium for code writing in wartime, declaring personal history and autonomy in the face of slavery, “yarn bombing” urban blight with a rainbow of knits, purls, and stitches.

We asked artists: what can you say with fiber that you can’t say with other mediums?

This call for entries invited artists to submit works that feature textile techniques as an art medium.

All styles/mediums were considered, as long as some type of filament (thread, yarn, wire, rope, etc.) was used in an intentional way.