April 11 - October 12, 2025
From Dallas Contemporary:
“Dallas Contemporary is pleased to present You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry, a group exhibition featuring artists El Anatsui, Candice Lin, Diedrick Brackens, Sanam Khatabi, and more, opening on April 11, 2025. Curated by Mexico-based curator Su Wu, You Stretched Diagonally Across It offers a consideration of tactility and image in 21st-century tapestries, and the strategies by which artists interrogate haptic sense, material tension, and narrative in weaving.
Taking its title from a letter Kafka wrote to his father, in which he imagines his father’s presence woven across a map of the world, You Stretched Diagonally Across It considers the interstices of human and digital memory, and surface and substrate — and argues for the enduring possibility of image as a materially substantive thing. At once a taxonomical inquiry and volatile categorical collapse, You Stretched Diagonally Across It strives to emphasize the complex geographies and modes of technological engagement in the age-old medium of tapestry in a current context.
Featuring works by thirty artists and designers, and organized by guest curator Su Wu, the exhibition depends, like the works that compel it, on an engagement with interstices specific to tapestry — between art and craft, the medium and the matter, and devotion and its technological mediation.
“Despite a wide resurgence of interest in textile in the last few years, we wanted to proceed from a simple question: What is a tapestry? What does it do?” Wu says. “The contemporary tapestries in this exhibition — most made within the last ten years — make a case for the capacity of image to be yet a substantive thing, in which the image and what holds it up are co-arising and even indistinguishable. In this digitally mediated moment, the works suggest new ways of considering the relationship between images and the materials and structures that comprise them.”
The exhibition will be further enhanced through a richly illustrated scholarly catalogue with a central essay by curator Su Wu and contributions by a range of contemporary scholars and voices. This catalogue serves to bring a depth of understanding and context for readers and visitors to the works assembled for the exhibition.
“Dallas Contemporary is honored to present this intelligent and challenging exhibition. Deploying Su Wu’s incisive sensibilities on the subject of contemporary tapestry has yielded an expansive presentation that highlights not only her own abiding interest in narrative, material, migration, and utility but, through the many artists included in the show, reveals how the age-old artform of woven images is still a vital and integral aspect of cultural storytelling, personal expression, and public and domestic placemaking,” said Interim Executive Director Lucia Simek. “Subsequently, the exhibition promises to literally cloak and soften the Dallas Contemporary galleries in the complex history, fables, and patterns, both geometric and migratory, of our own era.”
Exhibiting artists include: Caroline Achaintre, Hellen Ascoli, Yto Barrada, Diedrick Brackens, Melissa Cody, Negma Coy, Jovencio de la Paz, Josh Faught, Christina Forrer, Sanaa Gateja, Yann Gerstberger, Marie Hazard, Ane Henriksen, Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Suzanne Jackson, Sanam Khatabi, Tomasz Kowalski and Alicja Kowalska, ShinJa Lee, Candice Lin, Goshka Macuga, Christy Matson, Mai-Thu Perret, Sarah Rosalena, Analia Saban, Kiki Smith, Mika Tajima, Clarissa Tossin, Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, and Miranda Fengyuan Zhang.
To accompany the exhibition, Los Angeles-based vintage textile library and shop Kneeland Co. will activate the Dallas Contemporary store, featuring specially designed ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and collectibles for sale exclusively in the shop. All pieces will be designed for and inspired by You Stretched Diagonally Across It, even including works by artists featured in the exhibition.
ABOUT SU WU
Su Wu is a writer and independent curator based in Mexico City, examining forms and concepts drawn from the history of art and design to investigate premises of function, capability, and use. Across commissions, collaborations, and curatorial projects, Su Wu is among the leading advocates in a new generation of curators of post-disciplinary art, interrogating an emerging field of discourse and practice at the intersection of art, craft, design, and architecture, while considering the conditions and strategies that turn one into another.
ABOUT KNEELAND CO.
Los Angeles-based Kneeland Co. was founded in 2010 by Joanna Williams as a framework for sharing her ever evolving collection of discoveries and inspirations. As a thoughtfully assembled textile archive, Kneeland Co. offers designers inspiration for developing their collections, operating in a business-to-business capacity. In March 2020, Joanna expanded to include a retail storefront with Kneeland Co. Rarities, located in the neighborhood of West Adams. Reflecting her extensive travels, the store focuses on one-of-a-kind, globally sourced home goods, jewelry, and art, celebrating the unique history and significance of each piece. With regard to advising, drawing on the expertise of over a decade working in fashion, textiles and interiors, Kneeland Co. offers specially tailored visions for the enhancement of both residential and commercial spaces.
This exhibition is generously supported by Pace Gallery; Loewe; Catalina Gonzalez Jorba + Santiago Jorba; Dr. Rodger Kobes + Michael Keller; Ann + John McReynolds; Jill Parker + Rod Sager; Brian Thoreen; Headington Companies; LALO Tequila; and SWOON, the studio.
For high-resolution images, please follow this link.
ABOUT DALLAS CONTEMPORARY
Dallas Contemporary is a non-collecting arts space, a kunsthalle, with the mission to present the forefront of contemporary artistic practice and artistic production through exhibitions, performances, and public programs in order to advance the discovery and appreciation of the art of this moment. Always different. Always free.”
Reception: April 11, 2025 | 12–5 pm
161 Glass Street
Dallas, 75207 TX
(214) 821-2522
Get directions