I wonder if it's because I used to work in fashion, holding and touching clothing all day, that I have, or rather used to have, an ambivalent relationship to textile art. I'm being vague here: what I mean is that for a long time I didn't really think of textile art as art. (I know that’s fucked up; hear me out.) I guess I thought of it as decorative art, which is what fashion is. My engagement with textiles, as clothing, was nearly always predicated on seeing the garment as a commercial product. (Even avant-garde fashion brands function under this metric—they must in order to survive.) Even though I was, and remain, the type of person who buys a dress to hang on the wall alongside paintings and photographs, and never actually wear, I wasn't able to see textile art the same way I saw painting, photography, film, or even other forms of sculpture.
What changed my perception actually came from within the fashion industry, when I interviewed a Lima-based fashion designer of Peruvian and Iranian descent. Both of her heritages were steeped in ancient textile history. She told me how for the Incas, textiles were the medium through which they told their stories. The Incan civilization valued its textiles so much more than its gold, she said, that its leaders purportedly offered the latter to the Spanish invaders with little hesitation, in order to protect the textiles. My mind was changed for good after this conversation.
So now, when I see something like a Sheila Hicks sculpture with its raw, naturally-dyed fibers cascading down the wall in a museum, I don't see clothes anymore: I see stories.
-Eugenie Dalland