Atong Atem, Crossing Threads®, Monika Cvitanovic Zaper, Julia Gutman, Nadia Hernández, Kate Just, Paula do Prado, Linda Sok, and the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. Curated by Sarah Rose.

In the fibre of her being contemplates the role of women as anonymous carriers and preservers of heritage, bringing together a group of artists who use textile-based practices as a mechanism to write their personal and collective histories. With fibre as their dialect, these artists speak to legacies of womanhood and female subjectivity, displacement and diaspora, resilience and healing.

Textiles have long been acutely linked to storytelling, being used by centuries of women across a vast expanse of diverse cultures, geographies, and languages as a mode of communication. The transference and application of intergenerational knowledge and the sharing of matrilineal narratives between women underpins the exhibition. By engaging with their familial and gendered lineages, the artists are able to navigate their cultural and hybridised identities, and by extension their sense of self.

The exhibition considers the long standing and interwoven relationship between women and textiles, acknowledging that these practices were once historically relegated as ‘women’s work’ or a form of domesticated craft. This division between the sexes allowed textiles to emerge as a way for women to communicate their experiences and to forge strong links between female practitioners, leading to the creation of cultural communities through liberation, empowerment, and repossession of the medium.

Read full exhibition essay here.