An intricate presence unravels itself, unfolding in multicoloured swirls: although it is suspended in the air and seems almost weightless, we feel as if we can perceive its texture with our own hands. Racines de la culture (2018) is the title of this textile artwork by the American master Sheila Hicks, currently on view in Vienna as part of the collective exhibition Hard/Soft: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art, curated by Bärbel Vischer and Antje Prisker at Museum of Applied Arts (MAK). Showcasing works from 40 international artists—many of whom are being exhibited in the Austrian capital city for the first time, Hard/Soft is an opportunity to rethink how we look at these media, revealing unexpected perceptual ambiguities. Racines de la culture significantly exemplifies such ambiguities, while also reminding us, through its title, how media plays an essential role among the very “roots of culture”, crossing a multitude of geographical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries.

At first glance, some of the works chosen for this art exhibition might be misinterpreted as the umpteenth embodiment of what the Italian art historian Giuliana Altea defined as a ghost, the infamous ghost of the decorative (“Il fantasma del decorativo”, 2012), which keeps haunting us despite all our possible efforts to overlook it. In fact, despite the growing number of exhibitions and publications dedicated to these media throughout the last few years, the stereotypes usually associated with them persist and can strongly affect our perspective. However, after having been long connected with the categories of the feminine, the primitive and the exotic—quoting the French philosopher Jacques Soulillou, textiles and ceramics are now being increasingly rediscovered far beyond their surface.

Not by chance, one of the aspects emerging most meaningfully from Hard/Soft is the tactile dimension of these works, redirecting our gaze towards all the ways they expand into the exhibition space, almost as if they were animated by a life of their own. Walking through the exhibition, we thus, have the chance to encounter an eclectic selection of works that challenge the conventional contrast between the softness/warmth of textiles and the hardness/coolness of ceramics, while subverting as many other stereotypes.

After having established itself as a particularly relevant trend during the Venice Art Biennale 2022, the relentless revival of Surrealism is well represented by some large-scale installations that celebrate the versatility of the textile medium. A noticeable example is Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (1970/73), an installation by the American artist Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012), who was a historical representative of this avant-garde. This simulated room, inhabited by padded wool fabric figures with not even vaguely anthropomorphic features, presents itself as a disquieting scenography where these presences hybridise with furnishing elements, such as an armchair or a fireplace.

If Tanning’s work already challenges the sensory categories we conventionally associate with textiles, the two sculptures from 2002 THERAPIE (#63) and THERAPIE (#48) by the German artist Cosima von Bonin, surprise our perception even more. Standing out on the exhibition hall almost like monoliths, despite their textile and only tender nature, they are somehow reminiscent of the gigantic and marble-like mushrooms described by the French writer Jules Verne in his novel Voyage au Centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864). Another significant example which challenges our senses is Die fleißigen Totengräberinnen und ihr Werkzeug (The Hardworking Female Gravediggers and Their Tools, 2020-2023) by Ann Muller, where the playful flexibility of the velvet sculptures initially hide and subsequently raise diverse thoughts on women’s condition.

Flexibility is also a key concept in ceramics, as proven by the British-Nigerian artist Ranti Bam. She presents Ifas (2023), a series of terracotta vessels that curl in on themselves as they are undergoing a merger process, despite their objective solidity. The works displayed in the background, particularly the tapestries, such as the aluminium and copper wire Terra Firma (2020) by the Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, create a materic dialogue that is worth mentioning. Ceramics keeps transforming itself and taking shapes that subvert our imagery, as demonstrated by the Viennese collective Gelitin with their reinterpretation of the notion of tapestry in Alle für Alle (Ferdinandeum) (2021–2023). Resulting from a collective performance that took place at Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, in 2021, the work consists of a large number of anthropomorphic tiles which reaffirm the symbolic value of these media within communities.

At this point, it might be argued that tapestries are among the main characters of Hard/Soft. Reinventing themselves across generations and poetics even seemingly distant, they keep turning into new forms. After having enlightened the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale in 2022 with the monumental project Re-enchanting the World, the Romani-Polish Małgorzata Mirga-Tas presents a series of folding screens where the two-dimensionality of the patchwork technique is overcome by highly tactile details, such as fringes and laces.

Another Polish artist, Goshka Macuga, is here represented by the 3D tapestry Who Gave Us a Sponge to Erase the Horizon? (2022), a futuristic reflection on climate change activism that was previously selected for Everybody Talks About the Weather (2023) at Fondazione Prada in Venice. Tending towards the third dimension, tapestries take on strongly organic forms, thanks to the lessons of masters from the recent past such as the American Minimalist Robert Morris (1931-2018) and, last but not least, the Polish Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017), whose iconic sisal sculptures from the Abakans series float in the void like arcane spirits.

"Made with our hands, it is a record of our souls," wrote Abakanowicz about fabric on the occasion of the Fiberworks Congress in Berkeley, California, in 1978. If this approach to materials as well as to craftmanship may help build bridges between individuals and the rest of humanity, as the same artist wrote, then we hope that more new exhibitions will continue along the path indicated by Hard/Soft.

'HARD/SOFT: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art' is on display at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts until May 20, 2024.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its Editors.)