Tackling Textile Myth

Amy J. Lien ’09 wants to challenge what she calls the commercialized image of textiles, a medium often associated with femininity and domestic life. In order to do so, she has organized an Arts First show featuring student artwork that uses textiles as a point of inspiration. “Latent/Lubricious (Fabrication Methods)” opens tonight in the Adams Art Space.

Lien’s interpretation of textiles and fashion was influenced by critic Theodor Adorno’s views on pop culture as a means of producing commodities. Student artists including Anna J. Murphy ’12, Sabrina Chou ’09, Dana M. Kase ’11, and Amy M. Yoshitsu ’10 have contributed pieces to the exhibition.

“I think the show started off as an exploration of textiles, not necessarily as a medium, but as a frame of mind,” Kase says. “And so the idea of textiles was our jumping off point. Then a lot of our conversation about what the cohesive element would be grew more out of each individual’s engagement with the idea of textiles.”

The artwork in the exhibition ranges from knits to video to sculpture. Lien is including a video collaboration with J. Lorenzo Camacho ’07, a teaching assistant for the VES department; the film, “A Preemptive Maneuver” follows Vivid Luster, the alter ego of Lien and Camacho, on a mythic journey throughout the West.

One of Kase’s featured pieces is a necklace, which she used as a medium because she believes it to be an object charged with notions of gender, race, and class that are often related to hip-hop.

The exhibition’s broad interpretation of the use and definition of textiles gives the show an extra dimension.

“It’s a really exciting multimedia exploration of something that is often relegated to one medium,” Kase says, “and the breadth of topics addressed by the show is really relevant to art-making in general.”