Beauty is Resistance at browngrotta arts in Connecticut
In an era shaped by political division, ecological breakdown, and the commodification of nearly everything, beauty might seem like an unserious distraction. But for the artists featured in Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote, on view at browngrotta arts from October 11–19, 2025, beauty is not a diversion — it’s a purposeful mode of expression.
Lia Cook creates large-scale woven portraits of children based on video stills. Surprisingly intimate despite their size, they evoke recognition, nostalgia, and even grief. Photo by Tom Grotta
The exhibition transforms browngrotta arts' historic barn/gallery in Wilton, Connecticut, into a dynamic showcase of contemporary textile, fiber, and material-based works. Featuring more than 30 international artists, spanning generation and geographies, Beauty is Resistance challenges the idea of beauty as mere aesthetic indulgence and reframes it as a tool for protest, remembrance, and imagination.
Four Directions: Memory, Protest, Ornament, and Ritual
The exhibition is structured around four thematic sub-sections — Threads of Memory, Reading Between the Lines, Radical Ornament, and Ritual and Reverence — each exploring beauty’s power to spark reflection and renewal.
Adela Aker’s Interruption II was inspired by patterns on a bark cloth painted by the Mbuti tribe which she translated into noncontiguous lines painted on woven strips enhanced with horsehair. Photo by Tom Grotta
Threads of Memory
In works centered on remembrance, memory becomes tangible. Norma Minkowitz’s Frozen in Time series wraps once-used personal items—combs, brushes, a sealed diary—in dark threads. These ghostly forms evoke forgotten lives and lost stories.
Lia Cook creates large-scale woven portraits of children based on photo stills. Though monumental, their pixel-to-thread rendering makes them deeply intimate. Her works evoke recognition, nostalgia, and even grief, inviting viewers to shift perspectives as they move closer or farther from each piece.
Reading Between the Lines
Some of the artists in Beauty is resistance address themes of protest, politics, and ecological consciousness. The approach is sometimes direct, sometimes subtle, requiring a viewer to read between the lines. Spanish artist Aby Mackie works with reclaimed historic textiles, unraveling and reconstructing them to honor overlooked histories. “My practice becomes a form of quiet resistance,” she says, “honouring forgotten stories and reasserting the enduring significance of craft.” The work of fiber art pioneer Ed Rossbach brings a historical dimension with an El Salvador assemblage from the 1980s. Incorporating camouflage fabric and natural materials, this series of works critiqued U.S. covert operations in Central America, revealing long-standing ties between material, message, and protest.
Ed Rossbach, EL SALVADOR, muslin, camouflage netting, sticks, plastic, plastic tape, wire, tied, dyed, linoleum block printed, 1984.
Radical Ornament
Radical ornamentation, surface, and structure are claimed as valid — and vital — modes of messaging by some of the artists in Beauty is Resistance. Randy Walker’s Collider reimagines fiber through architectural frameworks. His use of thread contrasts solidity and fragility, visibility and invisibility, prompting deeper viewer engagement. Gyöngy Laky’s Graceful Exit uses brightly coloured plastic waste —byproducts of industrial cap-making. Laky’s term “industrial harvesting” reclaims discarded materials as raw beauty, pushing back against ideas of waste.
Gyöngy Laky’s Graceful Exit uses brightly colored plastic waste provided by Johnson Wax to rethink sustainability. James Bassler comments on the glorification of entitlement and profit, historic and contemporary, in Donald and his Habsburg Empire, made with thread yarn made from duck feathers – a traditional Mexican technique. Photo by Tom Grotta
Ritual and Reverence
Cultural traditions reinterpreted in contemporary forms are another mode artists use to make statements about politics and history. In Donald and his Habsburg Empire James Bassler draws parallels between imperialism and modern elitism. Using duck feathers spun via traditional Mexican techniques, he critiques the glorification of entitlement and profit. In Konstruction, Jin-Sook So modernizes the Korean tradition of bojagi through layered silver-plated steel mesh. Through controlled oxidation, she fuses old and new in a luminous, reflective surface.
Irina Kolesnikova pays homage to painter René Magritte. Her woven human figures devoid of individuality express the notion of that people lose individuality and become a dark mass in the eyes of autocratic rulers. Photo by Tom Grotta
A Gathering of Voices
“The multiplicity of materials and techniques expressed in this exhibition engages viewers,” says Tom Grotta, co-curator, but they are truly captivated when they identify the works’ deeper significance – to the artists and in many cases, to themselves.”
The exhibition includes more than 30 artists whose practices span continents and generations, including: Adela Akers (US); Marian Bijlenga (NL); Mary Merkel-Hess (US); Neha Puri Dhir (IN); Kay Sekimachi (US); Yong Joo Kim (KR); Stéphanie Jacques (BE); Misako Nakahira (JP); Eduardo Portillo & María Dávila (VE); Wendy Wahl (US). The full roster represents a global network of artists who are extending the boundaries of textile and material-based art.
A full-color exhibition catalog — #61: Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote, featuring an essay by Elizabeth Essner, Windgate Foundation Associate Curator of Craft at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — will be available for purchase.
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Further Information:
Beauty is Resistance: art as antidote is on view at browngrotta arts from October 11–19, 2025.
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Image credits:
Lead: Aby Mackie, 11am Fragments of a Life Lived 3, 2025 Randy Walker, 8rw Collider, 2015. Aby Mackie reconstructs reclaimed historic textiles as quiet resistance to honor overlooked histories. Randy Walker’s Collider reimagines fibre through an architectural framework, demanding that viewers look more closely.
All other images as credited in photo captions.