TEXTILE Cloth and Culture

ISSN: 1475-9756 (Print) 1751-8350 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rftx20

Weaving & We Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art

Jessica Hemmings

To cite this article: Jessica Hemmings (2017): Weaving & We Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, TEXTILE, DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1280287 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2017.1280287

Published online: 08 Feb 2017.

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Download by: [Jessica Hemmings] Date: 08 February 2017, At: 22:31 Exhibition Review Weaving & We Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China: Zhejiang Art Museum, August 25 – October 25, 2016. Exhibition Review

Weaving & We Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China: Zhejiang Art Museum, August 25 – October 25, 2016.

Spread over two floors, six galleries, keynote address at the Textile Think- and the museum grounds, Weaving ing symposium, in his attention to & We brought together over 60 the potential of the textile to nee- exhibitors—before counting parallel dle—prick, prompt and poke away— exhibitions organized around the at established thinking. Clearly city as part of the Second Hangzhou inspired by Maharaj’s style of think- Triennial of Fiber Art. A high propor- ing through an etymology of terms, tion of the works on display simply the exhibition curators—Liu Xiao, Xu would not have fit into a typical city Jia, and Assadour Markarov—offer center exhibition space in Europe. in the exhibition catalog further The predominance of large-scale linguistic connections. But etymo- work coupled with a far more bal- logical games are hard to play in anced representation of men and translation and what may very well women as exhibitors and conference be logical in one language soon participants may not have been a loses meaning in another. conscious strategy for the event The Zhejiang Art Museum is

organizers. Nonetheless, these two located in a verdant area near the facts contributed to an atmosphere tourist pilgrimage locale of West far less consumed by familiar textile Lake. A number of installations in debates around gender, domestic the museum grounds were built narratives, and the individual. around this thickly wooded land- For native English speakers, a scape. Shen Lieyi’s Walking Cloud confusing fact of the exhibition title (Figure 1) used bamboo to create was the absence of a particular rounded nest-like forms twisted emphasis on woven cloth; similarly around a group of trees punctuated the term Fiber Art was not intended by ladders reaching into the sky to suggest a particular geographical above. On this occasion China was representation despite the term not immune to health and safety being more familiar to Americans restrictions and, sadly, by the time (exhibitors predominantly repre- of my visit the work was marred by sented Europe and China). The say- warning signs to not climb on the ing of needles was a further stated otherwise inviting ladders. In con- theme, noted in Sarat Maharaj’s trast, Atelier Chen Haoru installed

REVIEWED BY JESSICA HEMMINGS Textile Jessica Hemmings is Professor of Crafts at the DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1280287 University of Gothenburg, Sweden. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis [email protected] Group Jessica Hemmings 3

Figure 1 Walking Cloud, Shen Lieyi, 2016 installation. Courtesy of Xu Jia and the Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art.

Figure 2 Mega Fabrication, Chen Haoru, 2016 installation. Courtesy of Xu Jia and the Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art. Exhibition Review 4

Figure 3 Farewell Song for Landscape, Yuan Xu Jiang and Yuan Liujun, 2016 installation. Courtesy of Xu Jia and the Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art.

Mega Fabrication (Figure 2) near the Inside the six galleries the work of South Korean artist Kimsooja’s museum entrance. Described in the exhibited was varied in quality and multiscreen A Needle Woman exhibition catalog as a team effort installation. In fairness, these dif- (2005) usefully tucked at the end to weave in space, long sections ferences offer a very real indication of a long gallery. This placement of bamboo pierced the skyline in of the various national and cultural allowed viewers to watch uninter- a jumble of sharp lines. Closer to systems we all study, work within, rupted by passing traffic, instead the ground the bamboo suspended and are inevitably informed by. left to muse on the flow of faces small, functional swinging seats for Placement of video work enjoyed moving around Kimsooja’s station- the public to enjoy. particular care with the installation ary presence. Exhibition Review 5

Figure 4

Factory, Chen Chieh-Jen, 2003, film and still images. Courtesy of Xu Jia and the Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art.

A thought-provoking aspect textile industry. This is the real factory workers taken throughout of the second Triennial was the industrial landscape.” Accompanied Hangzhou in 2013 accompanied by a number of artists who consider by eerie audio and smoke effects, catalog statement, urging us to “not the themes of factory closure and the work emphasizes the changes forget or be immune to textile work- loss of work. The topic is of course facing Datang, known as the Sock ers whose daily lives are embroiled familiar across Europe and North City of China for its volume of sock and embedded in a swathe of America, but in my experience China knitting, presumably the result cloth, material, dye and weaving often receives our blame as the of replacement by digital knitting ­production …”. place where manufacturing which machines. Perhaps the most moving has vanished from Europe has now Lu Yuanjion and Zhou Ping response to this theme was the moved. To find a number of Chinese presented unsettlingly saccharine Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-Jen’s and a Taiwanese artist also dwelling archive images from the now closed much earlier film and still images on local textile factory closures and state-owned Second Hangzhou Factory (Figure 4) that recorded obsolete industrial machinery was a Textile Mill where Lu Yuanjion’s female workers invited to return to sobering perspective to see. parents met and both worked. In the closed factory Lian-fu Textile. Chinese artists Xu Jiang and the catalog the artist acknowledges The women are filmed “cleaning” Yuan Liujun’s Farewell Song for that neither parent is now employed the abandoned Taiwanese factory— Landscape (Figure 3) spotlit a grid of by the textile industry. In contrast, the closure explained as yet another 24 sock knitting machines draped British artist, academic and curator manufacturing exodus in search of in spider webs of black cloth. The of the first Hangzhou Triennial of lower wage labor. artists’ catalog text explains, “This Fiber Art, Janis Jefferies, presented In the room adjacent to Fare- is the farewell song of [the] modern digital photographs of recent textile well Song for Landscape sat the Exhibition Review 6

Figure 5 Green Land, Liu Wei, 2016 installation. Courtesy of Xu Jia and the Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art.

­oppressive green canvas walls of Weaving & We is the extraordi- wedding gifts, provided a memo- Liu Wei’s Green Land (Figure 5). nary realistic embroidery of Liang rably sophisticated display. These Enormous, wrapped shapes evoke Xuefang, who renders detail the contrasts sum up the efforts of the a distinctly military atmosphere, eye can find hard to comprehend. second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber heightened by the audio and A short walk away the impressive Art, which ranged broadly from the smoke drifting from Xu Jiang and China National Silk Museum’s exhi- beauty of decorative histories to Yuan Liujun’s installation next bition of cotton shoes with embroi- a deep sense of unease about the door. However, also included in dered soles, traditionally given as realities of textile production today.