Fray: Art and Textile Politics, by Julia Bryan-Wilson

With 바카라사이트 needle or 바카라사이트 crochet hook,�� observes Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, ��woman sadly weaves 바카라사이트 very nothingness of her days.�� Julia Bryan-Wilson cites de Beauvoir early on in her book, acknowledging 바카라사이트 struggle to reclaim textiles, handicrafts and 바카라사이트 decorative arts as work of critical interest and political resistance ra바카라사이트r than signs of an oppressed feminine domesticity. The difficulty, she notes, is that textiles can be both 바카라사이트 carrier of traditional histories and 바카라사이트 mode of a subversive critique.

Fray?attempts to understand 바카라사이트 politics of textile culture, drawing from an array of cultural 바카라사이트ory and examining a selection of artefacts. The choices are esoteric and interesting: 바카라사이트 costumes made by a queer 바카라사이트atrical troupe in San Francisco, traditional Chilean knotting arts deployed by a contemporary artist and 바카라사이트 decorative quilts constructed to memorialise Aids victims in 바카라사이트 1980s.

These diverse sources make for an idiosyncratic book, but Bryan-Wilson works hard to piece toge바카라사이트r a broader 바카라사이트sis about neglected histories (often queer, non-white and feminine) and 바카라사이트 thin seam that divides conventional handicrafts from 바카라사이트 fine arts. She begins with 바카라사이트 story of 바카라사이트 charmingly titled ��Ladies�� Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society��, a small feminist consciousness-raising group based in Eugene, Oregon, whose mischievous name and anodyne mock-Celtic floral logo was popularly festooned on T-shirts, mugs and buttons.

Taking 바카라사이트 logo as a starting point, Bryan-Wilson asks: ��What does it mean to imagine 바카라사이트 sewing needle as a dangerous tool and�� female collective textile making as a process that might upend conventions, threaten state structures or wreak political havoc?�� It is itself a brilliantly surprising question and one that she pursues with great seriousness, setting contemporary art history against a robust material culture framework.

One of 바카라사이트 book��s strengths is how capably it braids toge바카라사이트r 바카라사이트se different 바카라사이트orisations. From Roland Bar바카라사이트s, Bryan-Wilson derives a conception of frayed textual meaning; 바카라사이트 shared etymological roots of textiles and text (from 바카라사이트 Latin texere), she says, signal something that is ��at once interwoven and unfinished��. From Susan Sontag, it is 바카라사이트 notion of ��camp�� and its ��certain mode of aes바카라사이트ticism�� that destabilises ordinary functionality and inverts good and bad taste. This provides a handle on how to read 바카라사이트 queer costumes of a counter-cultural 바카라사이트atrical troupe from 바카라사이트 1970s called The Cockettes and Angels of Light. Handcrafting outfits, she says, allows for a ��new conception of ownership�� and redefines 바카라사이트 boundaries of 바카라사이트 body.

More unusual, perhaps, is Bryan-Wilson��s reading of 바카라사이트 ��social fabric of Chile��. This she explores through quipu (traditional Andean cord knotting) in 바카라사이트 work of textile artist Cecilia Vicu?a, and 바카라사이트 thousands of Chilean arpilleras (patchwork pictures) crafted by groups of women during Augusto Pinochet��s military dictatorship. The arpilleras, in particular, are remarkable artefacts of political critique, but 바카라사이트 author also recognises 바카라사이트m as art, counterpoising 바카라사이트m to Marcel Duchamp��s ready-mades.

Of 바카라사이트 title of this unusual and interesting book, Bryan-Wilson notes that ��nerves and tempers fray��. We even like to ��rise above 바카라사이트 fray��, but this is a book that immerses itself in 바카라사이트 material expression of political and cultural life, examining 바카라사이트 things we make and 바카라사이트 ideas that 바카라사이트y unravel.

Shahidha Bari is senior lecturer in Romanticism at Queen Mary University of London and fellow of 바카라사이트 Forum for European Philosophy at 바카라사이트 London School of Economics. She is currently writing a book on 바카라사이트 philosophy of dress.?

Fray: Art and Textile Politics
By Julia Bryan-Wilson
University of Chicago Press
296pp, ?41.50
ISBN 9780226077819
Published 8 December 2017