Sheila Hicks: Material Voices
Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto
6 October 2016 – 5 February 2017
Photo: Cristobal Zanartu
Drawing on global weaving traditions as well as the history of painting and sculpture, graphic design, and architecture, American artist Sheila Hicks has redefined the role of fibre in art and influenced a generation of contemporary artists with her interdisciplinary visual language. From monumental architectural interventions to her more intimate textile works, Hicks’s singular approach to materials exemplifies her masterful articulation of colour, texture, space and scale.
The Textile Museum of Canada is pleased to host the first presentation of the artist’s work in Canada. Organised by the Joslyn Art Museum, Sheila Hicks’s ‘Material Voices’ spans 50 years of Hicks’ prolific career, capturing the renowned breadth of her work from large scale installations to small weavings made in response to specific places or memories, and from free-standing sculptures that combine supple materials with found objects to recent watercolours and mohair drawings on paper. Placing older work in conversation with the new, ‘Material Voices’ evokes Hicks’s understanding of her own practice as a continuous, open field that allows for innovation, appropriation and constant reinvention.