Anni Albers described “the event of a thread” as the possibility of constantly re-examining and re-structuring relationships and interconnections. The works found in the exhibition The Event of a Thread they bring together objects, installations and video essays that carry with them the context of each fabric, its specific qualities and its stories. Thus, they reveal the close relationship between themselves and the various aspects of our lives.

The core of the exhibition brings together 16 contemporary artists, each of whom creates aesthetically and culturally charged narratives. The works make visible the relationships that each artist has with their choice of materials, which takes a specific spatial form and functions as a means of transmitting information. As with textiles, the materiality and manufacture of the works presented allow cultural codes and aesthetic transfers to be simultaneously articulated, also taking into account the autonomy of the work of art.

For her itinerary in Mexico, this conversation is intertwined with the incorporation of 10 pieces from the Museo Tamayo-INBAL collection, which extends a dialogue from the modern and the contemporary through formal and conceptual experimentation with the textile technique. The pieces also reveal how textile transcends its strictly material dimension to become a means of exploring abstraction, color and the multiple expressive possibilities of form.

Like this, The Event of a Thread places special emphasis on the information that is stored inside textiles: What can a fabric tell us about its origins, its meaning and its social role? What were the economic conditions and social structures in which formal patterns and styles developed? What traditional techniques are those that artists have abstracted, which have they transposed or resurrected?

Curated by: Susanne Weiß and Inka Gressel

Travellign exhibition organized by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations of Germany (IFA) in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Mekiko and the Museo Tamayo.

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Image credit
Ulla von Brandenburg, Flying Geese, 2017. Photo: Uwe Walther.