Talk
Art and Craft Lectures: Janis Jefferies
What is the Curatorial Textile, Biennial/Triennial experience? What roles, if any, do such events play in positioning textiles within contemporary visual culture and practice? What are their implications for cultural and social perceptions of the field? And in what way do such events define and stabilize such perceptions?
Janis Jefferies will address some of these questions during her lecture "Textile Curating-histories, practices, concepts in International Biennials and Triennials"
Janis Jefferies, Emeritus Professor of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Artist, writer and curator Jefferies has pioneered the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture, internationally through exhibitions and texts. She has edited numerous books and chapter contributions on textiles, technology, performance and practice research. Jefferies trained as a painter in England, studied in Poland during the Cold War under Magdalena Abakanowicz, and has spent most of her creative life working in art schools and universities primarily in London, sometimes in America, Canada and Australia.
She is co-editor of the Handbook of Textile Culture (2016), wrote the introduction to From Tapestry to Fiber Art. The Lausanne Biennials 1962-1995. Fondation Toms Pauli Lausanne and Skira Editions Milan (2017), edited and wrote essays for TECHSTYLE Series 2.0: Ariadne’s Thread. Hong Kong: MILL6 Foundation (2017), A Reader TEXTYLE 2.0 FabPublic, Talking about Textiles, Community and Public Space CHAT/MILL6 Hong Kong (2018), and Philosophy of Weaving (as a practice / techne and/or as political metaphor). Athens: Nissos Publications (2017). She is currently working on the catalogue to accompany The Enchantment of Textiles research project with Professor Barbara Layne, Concordia University which documents 20 years of their collaborative, textile and technology-based research. The work was shown at the 8th International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art at Matadero Central de Diseño, Madrid Spain and 5th International Art and Science Exhibition and Symposium (TASIES 2019), Tsinghua University and the National Museum of China, in Beijing, China, September- November 2019.
