Embodiment, Materiality, and Meaning in Fiber-based Art

Fiber-based art works often function as sculptural works, environments, or even as extensions of the human body, engaging viewers through haptic qualities. They interrogate themes of gender, race, identity, labor, and memory through material choices, demanding modes of interaction that go beyond passive and distant visual consumption. Exhibiting and analysing Fiber Art under the same conditions as more traditionally accepted “high art” often fails to account for these qualities, diminishing the immersive, emotional, and intimate engagement the medium can evoke.

This project seeks to approach Fiber Art as a counter-narrative to dominant art historical paradigms - those that privilege vision over touch, mind over body, and masculine-coded media over feminized materials. Working within frameworks such as Haptic Aesthetics and Feminist Aesthetics/curating, It aims to restore the significance of haptic, material, and embodied experience as legitimate ways of knowing and experiencing art. By reclaiming these material and affective registers, the project sets out to establish a fiber-informed framework for understanding and curating Fiber Art and challenges the disembodied, ocular-centric norms that have historically shaped art discourse.