WASHINGTON, DC.- Morton Fine Art is presenting Knit, Restored, Woven, Healed, a global group exhibition of fiber art exploring overlapping themes of healing, reclamation, finding and being found. The exhibition features work from artists Kesha Bruce (USA), Lizette Chirrime (Mozambique), Maliza Kiasuwa (Belgium and Kenya), and Adia Millett (USA). Bringing together fiber art from these four female artists working across three continents, Knit, Restored, Woven, Healed is animated by a belief in renewal, healing and meaningful materiality. “While my work pays homage to the past through the use of repurposed fabrics and historical iconography, its bright atheistic imagery looks to, and is informed by the future,” shared Millett. “It reminds us of the importance of renewal and rebuilding, not only through the artistic process but also through the possibility of transformative change.” Knit, Restored, Woven, Healed is on view from May 24 - June 26, 2024 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space.

Continuing techniques practiced by their ancestors, Chirrime and Kiasuwa work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Rest and physical and spiritual healing are their desired outcomes. Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, thread, rope, paint, stitches and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood and the human condition. Chirrime’s interplay between textiles and abstraction, self and the universe, discarded and repaired, evokes a reciprocal world of self and other. “I use fabric to create works as a form of self-healing,” Chirrime says. “And simultaneously to heal the Universe.” Chirrime’s use of art as a therapeutic and spiritual tool creates a reconfigured understanding of representation and human nature, using thread after colored thread to inspire hope and healing.

Another artist with a longstanding practice rooted in found objects and the histories that inscribe them, Kiasuwa uses thread to stitch disparate materials into an interlacing dialogue. “Fiber art is inherently suited to themes of growth, renewal, rebuilding and change,” shares Kiasuwa. “The nature of fibers, which can be twisted, woven and stitched together, reflects the connection and resilience found in life. Each thread, while fragile on its own, becomes strong and supportive. The versatility of fiber allows for constant experimentation and evolution. I can dye, print, cut, and manipulate fibers in endless ways, reflecting the dynamic nature of change and transformation.” Kiasuwa’s works often simultaneously depict and simulate a vision of exchange between parties that—while possibly dissonant in material—are imbued with a sense of harmony and dignity in form. As a visual artist of European and African descent, Kiasuwa brings a panoptic perspective to her border-crossing work, which regards the coexistence of two worlds as an endless source of inspiration, and a potential space for reconciliation.

An exhibiting artist for over 25 years, Bruce has steadily oriented her craft toward capturing and encouraging the process of artmaking as an end in its own right. An intuitive combination of painting, collage and textile art, Bruce’s work represents the culmination of a holistic creative practice developed by the artist over several decades, often addressing themes of life, renewal and healing. “So many of the materials I use in my work have magically found their way to me.

Years ago I think I was more concerned with what it meant to use found materials or created or store-bought materials, but now I’ve just completely surrendered to the idea of letting objects, fabrics, materials find me,” said Bruce. Referred to by the artist simply as paintings, her mixed-media compositions are in fact patchworks of painted fabric, individually selected from Bruce’s vast archive and pasted directly onto the canvas in a textile collage that can sometimes resemble a quilt. The result of a slow and perpetual artistic method, each work represents hours of treatment, selection and juxtaposition until the whole becomes manifestly greater than its parts. Bruce’s process ends with her titling of each work: a poetic articulation of what the work is at this point capable of expressing for itself.

Millett’s work weaves threads of Black American experiences with broader ideas of identity and collective history, suggesting the fragile interconnectivity among all living things. Constructing works assembled from vibrant and textured fragments to fashion a meaning greater than its individual elements, Millett illuminates the multidimensional parallels between the creative process and personal identity. Her textiles, which draw on the domestic and artistic traditions of quilt-making, piece together to combine culturally diverse, often repurposed fabrics and historical iconography.