In the new group exhibition Carpetland. Critical Tapestries. you will walk through monumental tapestries and textile that reveal worldly complexities. This tongue in cheek titled exhibition attempts to look beyond the hype of the pleasing textile. You won’t find an endless supply of mass-produced carpets, but a dozen artworks by artists who look beyond the purely aesthetic side of textiles and tapestries.They pose critical questions about the perception and appreciation of this medium that is situated between art and craft.

All too often tapestries in the West have been treated as commercialized products, where woven symbols are exotically gazed upon. People tend to ignore the invisible, often female, labour-intensive production processes behind them, or do not grasp the narrative power of their symbolism.

Tapestries and rugs; felted, woven, knotted or embroidered; abstract or figurative; each of the artworks in this exhibition tells a complex story where technique and symbolism go hand in hand with criticism of our contemporary society. For one artist, it is a way to combat a one-sided colonial historiography, while another asks questions about ecology or our consumer culture through craft. Carpetland. Critical Tapestries. brings these multi-voiced artistic practices into the limelight.

Tapestries often emerge from a collective practice that thereby creates social conditions for empowerment. This exhibition not only brings together different practices, but also delves into the weaving process through collaborative workshops and by establishing partnerships for development and production between local artists and institutions.

Artists: Isa do Rosário, Saiqa Ejaz, Myriam El Haïk, Natalia Nakazawa, David Penny, Golnesa R. Pishkhani, Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales, Hussein Shikha, Jennifer Tee, Margo Veeckman, Monika Žaltauskaitė Grašienė