Protext!

Weaving is a practice usually assigned to women, to children, to the more neglected social classes. However, it is also the practice which more than any other was altered by the industrial and capitalistic society. From the enclosure of domestic manufactures to the alienation caused by the factory work, it was indeed through needles and threads that these workers were able to externate their discomfort towards an unfair world.

Protext! Quando il tessuto si fa manifesto (When fabric becomes a manifesto) is the book published on occasion of the homonymous exhibition at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, which presents eight artists: Serapis Maritime Corporation; Pia Camil; Otobong Nkanga; Tschabalala Self; Marinella Senatore; Vladislav Shapovalov; Güneş Terkol; and two workshops, held by the duo About a Worker and by the artist Canedicoda.

The book investigates the role of weaving as a transgressive practice, as a weapon of protest and sabotage. It is composed of two volumes; the first one illustrates, through interviews, biographies and artworks, the projects of the contemporary artists who more than anyone dealt with textile materials; in the second one, Marinella Senatore introduces forty drawings from the series «It’s Time to Go Back to Street» (2019–2020). Through telling the stories that inspired these drawings, she encourages all of us to take back the streets of our cities and to yell out loud the reasons for our discontent.