CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago announces On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival on view September 6, 2025 through March 15, 2026. Drawn primarily from the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, On Loss and Absence brings together more than 100 objects from diverse cultures dating from antiquity to today to reveal the ways people use textiles to sustain spiritual beliefs, understand death, cope with grief, remember those who have passed, and heal from trauma, both personally and collectively.

Four themes structure the presentation. “Death and Mourning” highlights how textiles help people negotiate experiences of loss and grief and includes funeral hangings, burial cloths, and mourning samplers, along with works by contemporary artists. “Transition of Realms” expresses spiritual beliefs about life, death, and other cosmologies that are woven into textiles through works such as Indonesian palepai (or ship cloths) and a Taoist priest’s robe. “Care and Repair” considers material losses, mending, and memory through textile fragments and highlights the science and artistry of textile conservation as a form of care. And finally “Resistance and Survival” showcases textiles as acts of defiance and cultural endurance.

“I encourage visitors to take in these wide-ranging works so that they, hopefully, find resonance with the textiles as vessels of remembrance, resilience and cultural continuity,” said Melinda Watt, chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of Textiles. “We hope the exhibition will provide our audiences with the opportunity to look closely and discover the stories each individual work tells.”

Curated by four artists whose paths merged at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Fiber and Material Studies department, On Loss and Absence is deeply informed by their practices as makers and their respect for fellow artists as holders of material, ancestral, and cultural knowledge.

On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival is curated by Isaac Facio, associate conservator, Textiles Conservation, Conservation and Science, The Art Institute of Chicago, and senior lecturer in Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC); Nneka Kai, artist, educator, and graduate alumnus, Fiber and Material Studies, SAIC; L Vinebaum, scholar, artist, and associate professor, Fiber and Material Studies, SAIC; and Anne Wilson, artist and professor emeritus, Fiber and Material Studies, SAIC. Melinda Watt, chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of Textiles, Art Institute of Chicago, served as the senior museum advisor for this exhibition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalog.