Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today

From the Moody Center for the Arts:

“The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University announces the exhibition Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today, opening January 13, 2023 and on view through May 13, 2023. Celebrating a new generation of international artists at the forefront of fiber arts, the show includes work by Igshaan Adams, Diedrick Brackens, Christina Forrer, and Billie Zangewa, among others, as well as a commissioned, site-specific work by Orly Genger.

The twenty artists featured in the exhibition speak to contemporary issues of identity, gender, race, sexuality, and power through a medium with deep, multicultural roots that predate written history. Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today explores this practice, specifically the ways in which fiber-based media can communicate both personal and political issues, through a selection of works that can be read as simultaneously autobiographical and socially critical.

“At the Moody, we’re interested in exploring how art and artists can shape our thinking about critical issues of our time,” said Alison Weaver, co-curator and the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts. “The works in Narrative Threads invite us to see how fiber, a historically peripheral medium in fine art circles, can speak to topics at the center of contemporary lived experience.”

Featured artists include Igshaan Adams, Hangama Amiri, Felipe Baeza, Diedrick Brackens, Josh Faught, Christina Forrer, Orly Genger, Ana María Hernando, Woomin Kim, Eric N. Mack, Maria Nepomuceno, Nnenna Okore, Patrick Quarm, Chiharu Shiota, Sagarika Sundaram, Ardeshir Tabrizi, Marie Watt, Qualeasha Wood, Billie Zangewa, and Sarah Zapata.

The exhibition will be activated through a season of performances in the galleries and in the Moody’s Lois Chiles Theater. The spring programming schedule kicks off on January 27 with a one-night-only performance of Honor written by Houston-born artist Suzanne Bocanegra and featuring actor Lili Taylor. The season also includes an original performative response to the exhibition orchestrated by artist and theater director Doug Fitch, on April 21, as a part of the Moody’s signature Dimensions Variable series.”