Sheila Hicks & Dorothea Tanning
in ‘HARD/SOFT Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art’, MAK Vienna
13 December 2023 – 20 May 2024
Dorothea Tanning, Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202, 1970-73, installation view, 1993, Camden Arts Centre, London. Courtesy: The Destina Foundation, New York © Artists Rights Society, New York, and ADAGP, Paris
Sheila Hicks and Dorothea Tanning are included in the group exhibition ‘HARD/SOFT: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art’ at MAK, Vienna, on view until 20 May 2024.
The exhibition showcases the work of around 40 artists from Austria and all over the globe, whose artistic practice draws on craft techniques such as embroidery, knotting, and weaving, as well as sculpting, wedging, and firing. The sculptures, installations, and painted works, which also include embroidered images, patchworks, and tapestries, show a vast range of artistic and interdisciplinary approaches that combine visual and applied arts, architecture, music, and digital space. These pieces offer an insight into production methods, ateliers, and workshops, as well as cross-disciplinary collaboration. Here, textiles and ceramics hold cultural significance for communities; they have become intertwined with economic and political systems. Alongside the materials’ characteristic features, the exhibition considers feminist ideas, explorations of the body, questions of cultural appropriation as well as gender stereotyping.[…]