PRESENTATION: Soft Logic-Textile action, politics and pedagogy
The exhibition “Soft Logic — Textile action, politics and pedagogy” proposes a radical re-reading of cultural history through textile practice. Rather than treating fabrics, weaving, and craft as marginal to technological development, the exhibition positions them as foundational epistemologies—systems of knowledge capable of reshaping how we understand humanity, memory, and social organization. What if archaeologists had been able to study the perishable materials that have long since dissolved? Perhaps we would speak of a “thread age” instead of an iron age, a “weaving age” rather than a bronze age.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lunds konsthall Archive
“Soft Logic — Textile action, politics and pedagogy” is a shared investigation of textiles as action, politics, and pedagogy. Visitors enter a space designed to unsettle established ways of knowing—one where material culture becomes a tool to rethink social narratives and imagine alternative logics.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a speculative premise: textile is not simply craft but a form of technology—an interface between body, memory, and community. Threads and patterns have historically shaped cultures, identities, and social systems, and continue to influence contemporary artistic language and collective practices.
“Soft Logic” moves across temporal and geographic strata. One installation traces Tensta’s long history—from medieval settlement to modern housing programs—through layered carpets cut with abstract patterns. Fabric bearing folds and traces of previous use foregrounds textile as a universal everyday gesture, while ceremonial textiles prompt questions about ritual in contemporary contexts, including the need to express queer community.
Several works connect traditional craft to modernist abstraction. Céline Condorelli, for example, draws on postcolonial artistic pedagogy and collaborates with Moroccan women weavers, linking historical pattern traditions with digital reinterpretations. Damien Ajavon engages with West African weaving techniques rooted in centuries-old ritual practices, while Hera Büyüktaşcıyan explores memory and architecture through layered sculptural forms referencing both ancient stones and modern concrete landscapes.
Across these practices, textile becomes a repository of hidden knowledge—a “memory bank” through which artists address migration, diasporic experience, and fragmented identity. It operates simultaneously as medium and metaphor: a carrier of meaning and a method for thinking about human conditions and futures.
The exhibition extends beyond display into participation. Tensta konsthall’s long-running Women’s Café—where participants meet regularly to sew, knit, and socialize—serves as an important reference point, underscoring the unifying and socializing power of textile practice.
Co-curator and participating artist Bella Rune frames textile not as an aesthetic endpoint but as a method for understanding people, technology, and the forces shaping the future. Textile culture, in this view, provides access to overlooked histories and alternative systems of thought—forms of knowledge embedded in everyday gestures, inherited craft, and collective making.
“Soft Logic” ultimately suggests that the so-called minor practices of weaving, stitching, and mending contain major epistemic potential. By foregrounding textiles as tools for social imagination and political reflection, the exhibition repositions craft at the center of contemporary discourse. It is less a survey of textile art than an argument: that material practices can reorganize how we see the past, navigate the present, and conceptualize the future.
Participatong Artists: Damien Ajavon, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Céline Condorelli, Luca Lee Frei, Kamruzzaman Shadhin / Gidree Bawlee and Bella Rune
Photo: Soft Logic — Textile action, politics and pedagogy, Installation view, Lunds konsthall, 2026, Curtesy Lunds konsthall
Info: Curators: Cecilia Widenheim and Bella Rune, Lunds konsthall, Mårtenstorget 3, Lund, Sweeden, Duration: 7/2-10/5/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 12:00-!9:00, Thu 12:00-20:00, https://lundskonsthall.se/
