An installation by Iva Jankovic and Antonio Jose Guzman, created especially for Interwoven Histories, with an spatial fabric of more than 200 meters of strips of cotton printed with an Indian Ajrakh block print technique, partially, but not completely, blocking the other to work. You literally have to look through the first layer to get a better picture. The installation sets the visitor – and thus the exhibition – in motion.

Indigo dye is intricately linked with histories of trade, of forced migration and of the cross-pollination between peoples. In his recent body of works, titled Electric Dub Station, Guzman and Jankovic investigate the transatlantic and colonial history of Indigo. Indigo, known as the ‘king of dyes’ has been a symbol of political powers for thousands of years. The exhibition Interwoven Histories explores the intricate connections between textile and marginalised histories through the lens of contemporary art.

The exhibition shows works by artists who each engage with textile as a medium and mediator to (re)tell the narratives of movement and migration, of protest and emancipation, of labour, care and repair, of political turmoil and resistance, intertwined with personal memories. Interwoven Histories probes the ways in which we read and write ‘history’ along the edges; proposing a concept of history as a multi-layered fabric consisting of different and at times conflicting threads and of entanglements that continue to shape our realities today.

Curated by: Christel Vesters

With works by: Mounira Al Solh, Fatima Barznge, Feministische Handwerk Partij, Antonio José Guzman & Iva Jankovic, Patricia Kaersenhout, Mila Lanfermeijer, Jennifer Tee, Vincent Vulsma, and Sheila Hicks.

Touch/Trace: Researching Histories Through Textiles unravels the intricate connections between textile, history and society from a contemporary art perspective. It explores how textile objects bear witness to and can transmit information about the time and place they were made in and simultaneously open up new perspectives onto those histories.

Touch/Trace is a research project curated by Christel Vesters and brings together artists, textile designers, textile makers, writers and thinkers, and everyone interested in the social and geopolitical developments that shape our world of today.