Subversive Threads

In the sense of a cross-over medium, textile has the ability to "overcome social and visual boundaries" (Virginia Gardner Troy, The Modernist Textile: Europe and America, 1890-1940, London 2006.) and rigid structures. With its immediate presence in everyday life, inevitably linked to the body – as protection, as second skin, as identification, as transformation, as decoration – textile is as fluid not only in its materiality but also its quality. Textile hugs the body, it is soft, flexible, but still provides support. It carries memories of places, people, smells, it creates comfort and spaces for vulnerability and healing. Working with textiles contains cultural knowledge and builds communities. Layer over layer, thread by thread, textile has non-linear, associative stories to tell. The exhibition and residency program Subversive Threads interweaves several event formats at three exhibition venues. With a focus on the queer-feminist history(ies) of textiles, the festival presents contemporary artistic strategies of textile-based art and their subversive potential.