Jenni Sorkin

This book project argues for a re-evaluation of textile-based art production in the United States between 1985 and 2000, an era when identity politics elided with a new materiality in artistic production. Intense, raw, and immersive, the immediacy of cloth is its evocation of the body. I will argue that cloth became the most important and influential medium through which to deconstruct race, gender, sexuality, mobility, and disability, rather than the lens- based media of photography and video, which came to dominate identity-driven artistic representation in American group art exhibitions.

During this era, mixed media sculpture and large-scale installations utilized textile as a central component, taking advantage of its structural characteristics to employ a wide variety of forms and techniques, such as quilting, stitching, weaving, knitting, braiding, and the use of found and scrap clothing. Conveying abstraction, embodiment, and corporeality, these artworks offered dynamic structures in which cloth was manipulated, folded, stacked, clustered, layered, and sewn, through repetitive accretions, to approximate the sizes, shapes, and contours of the body. Many such practices sought out historical forms of textile praxis, such as Victorian mourning cloth, fashions, and hair jewelry; salvaged and reclaimed textiles, including domestic linens and used clothing found at thrift stores, swap meets, and estate sales; animal products, such as raw wool, cow hide, and horse hair, in mass quantity; and historic techniques of assembly and production (quilting, spinning, natural dyeing), which were researched and relearned as a means of exploring the racialized, violent histories of indigo and cotton that was grown, picked, and processed by enslaved people throughout the southern United States.