All images from Fiberart International 2019. Above: Meg Arsenovic

Textile artists: enter your work for Fiberart International 2022, the 24th exhibition of contemporary textile art sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, Inc. Entries are open until August for original work completed after 31 December 2019. The exhibition (free to visit) will take place at two Pittsburgh arts organisations: Contemporary Craft and the Brew House Association. Fiberart International 2022 will record the changing definition of textile art and gives the audience a chance to experience works by a diverse group of artists who have been underrepresented in large institutions. Internationally respected artists and exhibition jurors, Chiachio & Giannone, Jessica Hemmings and Nnenna Okore will review art works submitted by artists from across the United States and from around the world. 

Image: Margaret Jo Feldman

Chiachio & Giannone work and live together as partners in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They create hand embroidered textile mosaics that reference LGBTQ artists and their legacy in Latin America. Jessica Hemmings writes about textiles. Her editorial and curatorial project, Cultural Threads, is  a book about postcolonial thinking and contemporary textile practice. Hemmings is currently Professor of Craft & Vice Prefekt of Research at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the 2020-2021 Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands. Nnenna Okore is an artist who works both in Nigeria and the United States. Her largely abstract sculptures and installations have been shown in galleries and museums in and outside of the United States. She has won several international awards, including a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2012. Okore is currently a Professor of Art at North Park University in Chicago.

Image: Greg Climer

The exhibition will present viewers with art that explores the unexpected relationships between textile art and other creative disciplines. Drawing on a variety of visual languages and global points of view, ancient textile techniques are transformed into contemporary artworks that ask questions and challenge us to look at ourselves and our place in the world. Exhibition related activities will be scheduled during the run of the show and will include the Fiberart Forum. This day-long event will feature a keynote address and informal discussion groups with exhibiting artists. 

For more information visit fiberartinternational.org