Weav­ing history, ques­tion­ing the present

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A power­ful instru­ment of commu­nic­a­tion, tapestry has never lost its express­ive force. Over the centur­ies, it has main­tained the endur­ing relev­ance of its role as a medium for the trans­mis­sion of polit­ical and social discourse, and as an art form that reflects the ambi­tions and concerns of its time. During the Middle Ages and the Renais­sance, magni­fi­cent tapestries were displayed in places of power­—royal, princely, and eccle­si­ast­ic­al—where they served osten­ta­tious, decor­at­ive, symbolic, and didactic purposes. Some were port­able, designed to accom­pany sover­eigns on their travels, func­tion­ing as mobile galler­ies of histor­ical narrat­ives and contem­por­ary aspir­a­tions. Beyond their primary func­tions of thermal insu­la­tion and celeb­rated orna­ment­a­tion, commis­sioned by the elites, these works oper­ated as instru­ments of polit­ical, economic, or moral self-affirm­a­tion.

The famous Bayeux Tapestry, a long, embroidered cloth produced in the elev­enth century, is an example of a visual narra­tion of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Not only does it recount an histor­ical event, it also dissem­in­ates polit­ical propa­ganda in favour of William the Conqueror. Simil­arly, the Conquest of Tunis tapestry, woven around 1550 in Brus­sels, commem­or­ates the milit­ary talents of Emperor Charles V in his milit­ary campaign against the corsair Barbar­ossa. Numer­ous other Renais­sance and Baroque series depict the heroic exploits of Roman emper­ors and gener­als—Al­ex­an­der, Constantine, Scipio Afric­anus, Titus, and Vespasian whose glor­i­ous deeds were inten­ded to reflect and magnify the prestige of their patrons. For example, the Acts of Scipio Afric­anus tapestries were first woven for Fran­cis I of France between 1532 and 1535 and re-woven several times over two centur­ies, includ­ing around 1660 for Luis Fran­cisco de Benavides Carrillo de Toledo, Marquis of Cara­cena and Governor of the Span­ish Neth­er­lands^[2].

Tapestry has also served as a vehicle of declar­a­tion and persua­sion. Oper­at­ing as a double mirror, a reflec­tion both of the times of the subject matter and those of the making, the woven narrat­ive acts as a tool for fixing memory, offer­ing a version of the past aligned with the personal and polit­ical interests of its patron. Detached from its histor­ical status as a rare and luxuri­ous object, tapestry exper­i­enced an unex­pec­ted revival after the Second World War, initially driven by celeb­rated French cartoon paint­ers and weavers, and later by younger, male and female artists, espe­cially from Cent­ral Europe, who in the late 1960s began to view thread—in vari­ous and often uncon­ven­tional mater­i­als—as a medium capable of artic­u­lat­ing a new artistic language. In doing so, they chal­lenged the divide between the applied arts and contem­por­ary art, between decor­a­tion, polit­ics, and soci­ety. Tapestry and textile art thus inaug­ur­ated a spec­tac­u­lar, near-limit­less era of exper­i­ment­a­tion and creation, notably ener­gised by the Lausanne Inter­na­tional Tapestry Bien­ni­als (1962–1995), which became a vital plat­form for artists and cultural insti­tu­tions.

Over the past fifteen years, tapestry has enjoyed a signi­fic­ant resur­gence of interest and visib­il­ity in the field of contem­por­ary art, thanks to the work of a new gener­a­tion of exhib­i­tion and collec­tion curat­ors, and artists from a wide range of discip­lines and back­grounds^[3]. The medium appeals to many multidiscip­lin­ary prac­ti­tion­ers who, whether weav­ing them­selves or employ­ing digital tech­no­lo­gies, explore express­ive and repres­ent­a­tional forms at the inter­sec­tion of ances­tral crafts­man­ship and a decis­ively modern and innov­at­ive vision.

One of the most strik­ing aspects of this revival is the increas­ingly crit­ical and socially engaged role of tapestry—an orient­a­tion rarely seen before the twen­ti­eth century. In contrast to its tradi­tional asso­ci­ation with self-proclam­a­tions of power and prestige, tapestry in the twen­ti­eth and twenty-first centur­ies has become a tool for revis­it­ing, ques­tion­ing, and even denoun­cing polit­ical and social issues. These include matters of iden­tity, free­dom of expres­sion, class, and gender, as well as broader soci­etal, envir­on­mental, and artistic concerns. Having regained prom­in­ence on the art scene, tapestry is reas­sert­ing its dual func­tion both as a decor­a­tion and as a power­ful medium of commu­nic­a­tion—­pro­pa­gand­istic in its tradi­tional role, and focused on obser­va­tion and critique in its more contem­por­ary expres­sion.

In this renewed textile land­scape, Grayson Perry and Goshka Macuga stand as pion­eer­ing figures. Through their monu­mental wall tapestries, they were among the first to inter­rog­ate and visu­al­ise the narrat­ives and tensions of twen­ti­eth and twenty-first-century history—­their social and polit­ical struggles, also personal, communal and univer­sal. Along­side them, or in their wake, other artist­s—such as Tracey Emin, William Kentridge, Otobong Nkanga, Ir.ne Kopel­man, Laure Prouvost, and Małgorzata Mirga-Tas to name but a few—have embraced tapestry with convic­tion and force as a medium to assert their perspect­ives on soci­ety, art, and the world. Often work­ing in collab­or­a­tion with special­ised weav­ing studios, whether artis­anal or digital, these artists create works anim­ated by that same commit­ment to aesthetic exper­i­ment­a­tion and socio-polit­ical comment­ary. Their woven produc­tions consti­tute a signi­fic­ant contri­bu­tion to the ongo­ing move­ment to rehab­il­it­ate craft prac­tices within contem­por­ary art. The inter­play between clas­sical tradi­tion and tech­no­lo­gical innov­a­tion, glor­i­fic­a­tion and critique, is also help­ing to repos­i­tion tapestry as a medium of partic­u­lar relev­ance in today’s inter­na­tional art land­scape.

In Perry and Macuga’s work, the glor­i­ous narrat­ives of antiquity—those of Scipio and Hanni­bal, the triumphs of Titus and Vespasian, and the renowned cycles of the Life of Noah or the Acts of the Apostles—­give way to more subtle altern­at­ive stor­ies and prac­tices. Perry draws inspir­a­tion from medi­eval and Renais­sance narrat­ive tapestries and paint­ings to create contem­por­ary alleg­or­ies imbued with poin­ted critiques of Britain’s social, iden­tity, and consumer cultures. Macuga, on the other hand, approaches tapestry as a form of visual archive—an assemblage of moments from the past and present, designed to re-exam­ine the mech­an­isms under­pin­ning power struc­tures and collect­ive memory. Both artists construct rich tableaux that strike and intrigue, in which histor­ical, alleg­or­ical, and contem­por­ary figures, includ­ing public person­al­it­ies, close friends or rela­tions, and even self-portraits, converge. These impossible encoun­ters gener­ate layered worlds that invite view­ers to engage in histor­ical, philo­soph­ical, and aesthetic dialogue through the tapestries and their specific spatial install­a­tions.

The woven works of Macuga and Perry are firmly anchored in the present, demon­strat­ing that the medium of tapestry can be as incis­ive and mean­ing­ful as any other form of contem­por­ary art. The Polish artist’s Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not (2012) and the Brit­ish artist’s The Vanity of Small Differ­ences (2012) stand as biting critiques and obser­va­tions of contem­por­ary culture.

Mech­an­ic­ally woven on digital Jacquard looms and developed in collab­or­a­tion with special­ist program­mers, the tapestries of Macuga and Perry require lengthy design and exper­i­ment­a­tion processes. Nonethe­less, they are consid­er­ably less costly and quicker to produce than the monu­mental series of earlier centur­ies.

By rein­vent­ing the rela­tion­ships between tradi­tion and modern­ity, memory and testi­mony, twenty-first-century tapestry reaf­firms its status as a living, increas­ingly relev­ant medi­um—one that offers a mater­ial and tangible altern­at­ive to the satur­a­tion of digital imagery in our every­day lives. The Times in Tapestry exhib­i­tion thus posi­tions itself as an affirm­a­tion of the rich­ness and complex­ity of the tapestry medium in the context of the present century. By bring­ing together works that engage in dialogue with the past while prob­ing present-day issues, the exhib­i­tion bears witness to the vital­ity of the medium and its capa­city to mobil­ise tech­niques, forms, and narrat­ives with renewed force. Whether personal fictions, collect­ive chron­icles, or global critiques, the exhib­ited tapestries, each in their own way, continue the legacy of woven narrat­ives, endow­ing it with a new urgency. Times in Tapestry invites us to view tapestry as a site of thought, know­ledge, and exchange—a space where memory, commit­ment, and creativ­ity converge in a medium that is simul­tan­eously artwork, message, discourse, and monu­ment