Threading Time: Cecilia Charlton’s Reinkarnacija

In Reinkarnacija at the Zidinys Gallery in Vilnius, London-based American artist Cecilia Charlton draws on the repetitive gestures of textile-making - spinning, weaving, embroidering. Just as the weaver’s shuttle passes back and forth, or the spinner coaxes wool into a twist, Charlton’s work invites us to reconsider the philosophical shape of time: not as a straight line, but as a series of loops and returns. The exhibition pairs her contemporary textile works with historical Lithuanian pieces from the Tamošaitis collection to suggest that within the fibre arts, rebirth is not a metaphor but a method.

Cecilia Charlton, Next, you know what you know (Ocean series, Midnight Zone), Hand-woven cotton and wool yarn, 2023.

In the Ocean Series, a quartet of woven paintings on loan from the National Museum of Lithuania, Charlton uses pattern and colour to explore the unconscious mind through the metaphor of oceanic depth. Moving from the Sunlight Zone to the Abyssal, each panel evokes a specific zone of the sea, becoming increasingly abstract as light gives way to darkness. In the upper layers, she plays with optical distortion - mimicking the shifting surface of water - while deeper zones engage sound and touch, as if reconfiguring the senses to navigate the unknown...

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Image Credits:

Lead: Cecilia Charlton, The flower of what's true (red), 2024. Hand-embroidered wool yarn on cotton canvas over cedar panel, 24-carat gold leaf.