Sheila Hicks: Time100 Art List
Julia Halperin, Time
September 2026
[…] Curators and collectors once considered artists who worked with fiber and thread less important than those who worked in marble or bronze. Not anymore. American-born, Paris-based Sheila Hicks has been a driving force behind a shift that’s moved fiber art from the periphery to the center of the contemporary art world in the past decade. Now 92, she has been committed to the form since the 1960s, creating works ranging from diminutive geometric weavings to mountains of multicolored yarn that reveal the expressive potential of the material. Having studied fiber for decades with artisans from Mexico to Morocco, she has shown how the same material can be used to create an exuberant waterfall unfurling from the ceiling and a taut experiment in warp and weft the size of a paperback book. Her work continues to find new audiences around the world, with shows in 2026 at the West Bund Museum in Shanghai; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France; and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo. […]