Following the Threads

From the shrouds that go with us into the grave to the cherished keepsakes that remind us of those we have lost, cloth is part of life’s most significant transitions. On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival presents more than 100 such objects from across diverse cultures and times. Curated by a team of artists with ties to the Fiber and Material Studies (FMS) department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)—myself, Nneka Kai, L Vinebaum, and Anne Wilson—the exhibition reveals how humans have used textiles to cope with death, process grief, uphold belief systems, and recover from personal and collective trauma. Conservation insights throughout highlight the wear, degradation, and loss textiles themselves endure, offering deeper understanding of their histories and construction.

As artists and educators, my colleagues and I approached the development of this exhibition from a unique position, one shaped by our hands-on knowledge of textile making and our commitment to teaching through material engagement. We collaborated closely with Art Institute staff, fellow SAIC faculty and alumni, and our extended community to honor the makers and users of these objects and their histories.

Close, slow looking is at the heart of how we studied the objects in this exhibition. Conservation analysis often begins with paying careful attention to the microstructures of cloth—examining each object thread by thread, twist by twist—and extends outward to larger questions of technique, history, and cultural meaning. At the micro level, magnification tools reveal hidden worlds: the texture of a fiber, the spin direction of a yarn, the interaction of threads. These minute details unlock complex narratives about how a textile was made, who made it, and how it was used, revealing these objects as ever-evolving creations that hold traces of movement, meaning, and lived experience.

For example, while studying this mourning sampler made at a school in Providence, Rhode Island, around 1810, former Art Institute fellow in Textiles Conservation Lucinda Pelton used backlighting and UV light to highlight the traces of deteriorated black silk that once formed the letters of a verse. Guided by needle holes and thread residue, and studying similar works, she carefully deciphered the text stitched on the base of the monument:

       Their minds were tranquil and serene,
       No terror in their looks were seen,
       A Saviour’s smile dispell’d the gloom,
       And smooth’d their passage to the tomb.

The examination of fraying threads on this 18th-century Taoist robe from China, which was worn by a priest during funerary rituals, facilitated another revelation: calligraphic text written on paper embedded underneath. We suspect that this paper was used as a support structure to facilitate the textile’s creation. Over the years, as more and more of its text has appeared, the paper and its words have asserted themselves as integral parts of the object, though not enough of them can yet be seen to reveal the context. 

Artist and writer Jen Chen-su Huang considers this in a poetic piece written for the exhibition’s accompanying catalogue, wondering whether the characters were written by the maker of the garment—possibly to mark the locations of a new thread color or technique. Or maybe “the calligraphy behind the stitches holds spiritual meaning, like lines from a mantra.” This wonder carries with it a desire to connect with the past and the maker, and we are ultimately left to ponder what else has been left embedded in this sacred cloth.

With Mourning Weave, an oversized interpretation of a memorial pendant, American artist Angela Hennessy drew from the 19th-century practice of incorporating hair of the deceased into jewelry, which enabled the mourner to hold the departed physically close. While such objects tended to be expensive and elaborate, Hennessy reimagined this tradition using Velcro and velvet to evoke the texture of Black hair, symbolizing everyday domestic labor and honoring Black lives lost through gun violence. 

Textiles can also hold other traces of the physical body, beyond what may be visible to the naked eye. This tunic, more than 1,000 years old, is one of many textiles that covered a child during burial in Egypt and would have also been used in daily life. Textiles like this not only preserve patterns and dyes but become biological archives of the very molecules of all who have worn or interacted with them from the time they were made to today. Using an experimental technique to analyze fragmented DNA from such specimens, scientists can decode stories of diseases that shaped civilizations hundreds or even thousands of years ago. In the case of this tunic, DNA analysis identified tuberculosis pathogens, though it’s unclear if they are contemporary to the child or were introduced following the excavation.

As the objects showcased here demonstrate, close looking and technical analysis has the potential to open new paths of understanding, reminding us that textiles are not static relics but part of a continuum—threads connecting past, present, and future. I invite you to take your time when visiting the exhibition and follow its threads of ongoing dialogue between artists, art historians, conservators, and cultural practitioners, contemplating not just how each object was made but the sophisticated aesthetic and philosophical principles underpinning them. In the process, you’ll come to know these textiles intimately as objects of mourning and vessels of memory, repair, and resilience.  

—Isaac Facio, associate conservator, Textiles, Conservation and Science

Topics

• Conservation
• Exhibitions
• From the Curator
• Textiles