Stitching stories

As Arnolfini welcomes Threads: ‘Breathing Stories into Materials’, a major exhibition featuring 21 contemporary international artists and makers who use textiles as their chosen medium, we sit down with co-curator Alice Kettle to learn more about the stroytelling power of the art form and Bristol’s own complex textile history...

Tell us about the 21 international artists and makers featured in this exhibition...

The exhibition includes a range of contemporary artists, using textiles as an artistic means to tell stories. The artists are either established or emerging, from a range of backgrounds, who draw from traditions of making and textile processes to make new works that talk powerfully about the present.

They all use textiles as their chosen medium as central to their artistic practice or within a wider practice. We selected the artists as a collaborative process where we have shared and introduced each other to a range of varied artistic practices. The works are ambitious, intimate and varied. They celebrate how the texture and materiality of textiles can be relatable and be reinterpreted to represent chronologies of social, geographical, political experience. Whilst they are individualistic in their approach and impulse, their stories intersect, drawing threads across themes which demonstrate how materiality, fabrication and the iconography of textiles connects with its histories and formal qualities to create artistic works which resonate to make new narratives in current times.

Tell us about the different narratives woven into the exhibition and how the pieces are connected to one another... Making and materials are at the heart of all of the work. Textile has its own agency held in the substance of its fabric, the processes of making and associative meanings. The works tell stories through the layers of these meanings and memories with the artists bringing a contemporary view.

Powerful symbolic associations to migration, trade and labour are brought into focus by Lubaina Himid and Yinka

Shonibare’s use of Dutch or ‘African’ wax print cloth (also known as Ankara), Ibrahim Mahama’s jute sacks, and weave by Young In Hong. Whereas Raisa Kabir’s woven cloths, Ifeoma U. Anyaeji’s ‘threaded’ sculptures and Esna Su’s knitted vessels speak of identity and personal histories. Celia Pym uses textiles to underline the importance of reusing and repair, whilst Lucy Orta considers our material impact on the environment.

Threads also includes new artist commissions by Birmingham-based Farwa Moledina and Bristol-based South Korean artist Young In Hong; a reimagining of the work Ezuhu ezu by Nigerian artist Ifeoma U. Anyaeji during her residency in Bristol as the first recipient of the Arnolfini ACBMT International Artist Residency Award.

How will Threads provide an opportunity for audiences to engage with Bristol’s own complex textile history?

A Memory Map provides insight and signposts the history and locations of Bristol’s textile past and current activities. This shows where you can access more information about the historic sites, such as The Great Western Cotton Factory, the Wool Hall, the Brooks Dye Works at the MShed Textiles’ Display. It also shows where contemporary activities are taking place, for example the Bristol Textile Recyclers, Bristol Weaving Mill and the Bristol Textile Quarter. The Memory Map includes audio links of the voices of those whose memories are bound up in these histories.

There will also be a supporting programme of engagement activities including family workshops from Let’s

Make Art, participatory artworks, Celia Pym’s Mending Project and interactive activities from Bristol Weaving Mill. Talks, music, dance, and film will further bring the building to life with opportunities to ‘make, unmake, and remake connections’, creating a new community of makers and memories.

Tell us about the accompanying exhibition of work showcasing the talents of refugee women who attend Arnolfini’s Women’s Craft Club and members of Bristol-based charity Bridges for Communities’ Stitching Together...

The exhibition, StitchingTogether , will shine a light on the textile creations and stories of women from across Bristol, including the work of Bridges for Communities’ Stitching Together sewing groups and Arnolfini’s regular Women’s Craft Club.

Bridges’ Stitching Together sewing groups provide a welcoming space for refugee and asylum-seeking women in Bristol to be creative and make beautiful textile-based art, clothes, and homewares; from cushions to capes, waistcoats to dresses. While stitching together they are gaining confidence, honing their language skills and making friends.

Arnolfini’s Craft Club is a weekly ‘craft and conversation’ group run in partnership with Bristol Refugee Festival and Bridges for Communities, where women from all backgrounds meet together, have a cup of tea, share skills and get crafty.

Bridges for Communities is a Bristol-based charity that exists to create kinder, fairer and more welcoming communities where people of different cultures, races and faiths live well together.

Since 2020, Arnolfini and Bridges for Communities have enjoyed a growing sense of partnership and collaboration, exploring a whole range of ways in which arts and culture can bring people from different walks of life together.

Tell us about your latest project, Thread Bearing Witness, and the expansive embroidered canvas Ground that will be appearing at Arnolfini...

Thread Bearing Witness is a project of a common thread, formed through the contributions from those seeking asylum and refugees. Thread operates as a means of human connectivity, it sews us together and binds what is fractured and disrupted as an act of reparation.

The project invited individuals and groups of refugees and those seeking asylum, to contribute to and inform new monumental, stitched artworks called Sea, Ground and Sky, universal sites, alongside other multiple and varied activities. Working with groups and individuals in Greece, France, the United Kingdom, and in refugee camps, I invited them to contribute drawings which I embroidered into these huge works. These huge works affirm the value of human dignity as rich, colourful and multi-dimensional. In this exhibition, audiences will see Ground, which draws upon the heritage of textile iconography with flowers, hearts, leaves, kites and birds from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and African countries. The project has evolved and developed and continues in a variety of ways using stitch as a non-verbal means to realise the stories which would otherwise not be told. n

• Threads: ‘Breathing Stories into Materials’ is running from 8 July –1 October. During the opening weekend, on Sunday 9 July, Alice Kettle and Gemma Brace, Head of Exhibitions at Arnolfini, will present Unravelling Threads: Stories from the Artists. An informal set of conversations with exhibiting artists including Richard McVetis, Young In Hong and Anya Paintsil, audiences are invited to drop-in, seat themselves on bean bags and yoga mats and welcome to ask questions.