The Contrariness of Curtains : The Subversive Spirit of Textile Architecture in Contemporary Art

Abstract

This project arose from my daily habit of contemplating the filtered sunlight streaming through our living room curtains. During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, our transparent curtains – a constant backdrop to our daily lives – prompted questions about domesticity and gender, peripheries and borders, eroticism and fantasy. The appearance of such questions signalled the subversive potential of curtains within contemporary art practise. If the curtains within my domestic context could embody such multiplicity, how might other artists be harnessing the transgressive spirit of curtains? What implicit ideologies might curtains challenge? What speculative propositions transpire from the inclusion of curtains in installations?

During this project, the emphasis has been on integrating practise-led research with collaborative efforts both in the studio and in exhibitions. Collaborating with an architect, woodworker, welder, and upholsterer to achieve my final vision, An Accumulation of Collaborations, is reflective of the architecture and interior design disciplines that I discuss here. Undertaking bespoke fabrication processes challenges notions of singularity and authorship in relation to studio practise, circling back to the characteristics of interdependence and multiplicity implicit to installation.