FRANKFURT.- With the exhibition Wool. Silk. Resistance., the Museum Angewandte Kunst is dedicating itself exclusively to rugs, carpets, and tapestries for the first time in 45 years. This comes at a time when interest in handmade textiles of all kinds is experiencing a resurgence, reflected in a striking number of international exhibitions.

Rather than approaching rugs, carpets, and tapestries from a stylistic or art-historical perspective, the exhibition presents them within a trajectory that exists outside established Western approaches to textile studies. The title introduces a series of questions: Can resistance be articulated through textile materials? And if so, in what ways do rugs, carpets, and tapestries express an “aesthetics of textile resistance”? The exhibition centers on the perspectives of international artists working in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, who engage with different dimensions of resistance through rugs, carpets, and tapestries understood as open and evolving art forms.

Producing art within sociopolitical contexts entails positioning oneself in relation to specific social realities. This also requires a clear stance toward the concept of resistance – a relational term – that defines against whom or what resistance is directed. In this exhibition, resistance is initially understood as an experience of difference that, through subjectivity, gives rise to a wide range of aesthetic and artistic forms of expression as well as a broad range of themes. Within the artistic and emancipatory reconfiguration of rugs, carpets, and tapestries, the exhibition addresses political opposition, resilience, and material or structural endurance in individual ways. Acts of resistance may be directed against perceived illegitimate systems of power, traditionalism, discrimination, racism, trauma, or environmental destruction.

The exhibition features selected works by the following artists: Faig Ahmed, Diedrick Brackens, Johannah Herr, Jan Kath, Alexandra Kehayoglou, William Kentridge, Baseera Khan, Noelle Mason, Otobong Nkanga, Tobias Rehberger, Erin M. Riley, Tsherin Sherpa, Rose Stach, Nasan Tur and Jeroen van den Bogaert.