Threads of Defiance: Reclaiming the Body Through Textiles

Mass Production on 14th Street

By Mina Loy

Ocean in flower of closing hour

Pedestrian ocean of whose undertow,

the rosy scissors of hosiery snip space

to a triangular racing lace

in an iris circus of Industry.

As a commodious bee the eye

gathers the infinite facets

of the unique unlikeness of faces;

the diamond flesh of adolescence

sloping toward perception:

flower over flower,

corollas of complexion

craning from hanging-gardens

of the garment-worker.

All this Eros' produce dressed in audacious

fuschia,

orgies of orchid

or dented dandelion

among a foliage of mass-production:

carnations tossed at a carnal caravan

for Carnevale.

The consumer,

the statue of a daisy in her hair

jostles her auxiliary creator

the sempstress—on her hip a tulip—

horticulture of her hand-labor.

From the conservatories of commerce'

long glass aisles,

idols of style project a chic paralysis

through mirrored opals imaging

the cyclamen and azure

of their mobile simulacra's

tidal passing;

while an ironic

furrier, in the air,

combines the live and static

Femina

of the thoroughfare;

a windowed carousel

of girls revolving

idly in an unconcern

of walking dolls

letting their little wrists from under

the short furs of summer,

jolt to their robot turn.

Now, in the sedative descent of dusk

the street returns to stone;

alone two lovers, crushed

together in their sweet conjecture

as to Fashion's humour,

point at the ecru and ivory

replica of the dress she has on,

doused in a reservoir of ruby neon;

only — — her buttons are clothespins

the mannequin's, harlequins.

Mina Loy—poet, playwright, artist, designer, and radical thinker—wove the raw realities of female experience directly into her work. She saw the female body as a site of resistance, a canvas for affirmation and growth. Her portrayals embraced the emotional, rational, sexual, and social dimensions of womanhood, trauma included. Her Feminist Manifesto (1914) was strikingly unconventional for its radical tone and uncompromising vision. It rejected gradual reform in favour of total upheaval, calling for the destruction of traditional gender roles and purity ideals. However, this was a bit odd because rather than promoting sisterly solidarity, Loy sharply criticises women’s complicity in their own oppression and urges a hyper-individualistic path to liberation. Her modernist, poetic style makes the text as artistically provocative as it is politically explosive—deliberately jarring and unapologetically bold. Though rooted in a Western modernist framework, Loy’s feminist lens disrupts traditional narratives in ways that still resonate—and still demand critique—today. This manifesto, alongside her poem Mass Production on 14th Street, appears in The Lost Lunar Baedeker, a collection where the moon becomes a playground for those shackled by societal constraints—a celestial escape for lifeless adults to reclaim their freedom. This hidden treasure—bodily and politically bold—was the starting point for the exhibition Hosiery Snip Space to a Triangular Racing Lace.

Beyond its tribute to Loy, the exhibition’s title is a metaphor for textiles, its core medium. It evokes garments intimately entwined with femininity—fabrics that drape, shape, and sometimes constrain the female body. Hosiery, lace, the precise snip: these materials flirt between function and fantasy, between empowerment and objectification.

Loy’s work emerged from Modernism—an artistic movement often seen as a male-dominated domain, riddled with misogynistic and xenophobic undercurrents. The canon of Modernism has been written through a gendered lens, where the intellectual, avant-garde, and experimental were coded as masculine, while the domestic, emotional, and accessible were feminised and dismissed. Women modernists—aside from a few like Virginia Woolf—were often pushed to the margins, their voices hushed beneath the static of so-called high culture. Yet women were undeniably present, shaping and reshaping the movement, despite history’s attempts to render them invisible.

Years have passed, and we are still reclaiming that freedom and presence within our lives and bodies. Women’s narratives remain buried beneath dominant histories, especially in art: migrant artists, artists in the diaspora, artists of colour, artists in exile, Indigenous artists, Black artists, feminist artists. Each contending with intersecting layers of marginalisation. This exhibition draws from these hidden voices, reframing and owning our bodies as both a site of struggle and a force of change. In a world where gender, sex, race, and identity remain battlegrounds, the fight for equality is ongoing—the body is still a contested space: biological, social, and politically charged. At its core, this exhibition explores how our bodies become intimate vehicles of protest. By making visible the inequalities mapped onto them—through gender, sexuality, health, and rights—the works challenge the divide between public and private. The body becomes a political text, inscribed with power dynamics; a shifting landscape where binaries such as masculine/feminine, mind/body, able/disabled, fat/thin, heterosexual/queer, young/old are constructed and enforced. These borders are porous, unstable. Here, the body is not just seen but spoken through—demanding to be heard.

Key aspects of feminist body politics include: Reproductive Rights & Health, Sexuality & Violence, Understanding the Biological and Social Body, Power & Protest, Labour & Inequality. Each artist in the exhibition navigates one of these terrains, bringing personal narratives into a collective conversation about body politics. A recurring theme of grief-survival-life runs throughout—an acknowledgment that in claiming space for the body, we also claim space for memory, for loss, for survival.

Textiles, the chosen medium, reinforce these themes. Inspired by Loy’s poetry but extending far beyond it, textiles are fundamental to the politics of the body. They conceal, protect, and expose. They engage the senses, trigger memories, and tell our stories. From birth to death, we are wrapped in fabric. And yet, textiles have historically been relegated to the realm of women’s work—a quiet labour of civilisation undervalued under patriarchy. Here, in this exhibition, they are reclaimed and radicalised—challenging elitist, male-centric definitions of artistic value. Through needle and thread, weave and stitch, textiles become acts of resistance, unraveling the narratives imposed upon our bodies and reweaving them into something powerful, something our own.

Textile art has long been a site of both subjugation and defiance, deeply entwined with gendered labour and political struggle. For centuries, it was dismissed as craft—functional, decorative, feminine—rather than recognised as fine art. But in the 1960s and ‘70s, the feminist art movement challenged this hierarchy, reclaiming fiber arts as both legitimate and radical. Artists like Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, and Miriam Schapiro blurred the boundaries between craft and high art, using embroidery, quilting, and fabric assemblage to center women’s stories and disrupt the male-dominated art world. The Pattern and Decoration movement further legitimised textiles, embracing ornamentation and materiality as direct confrontations to modernist minimalism. Alongside the works in this exhibition, we honour broader feminist textile movements that have emerged globally, using fabric as a site of resistance and activism:

• Sexuality & Violence: In Mexico and across Latin America, bordados feministas (feminist embroidery) have become a grassroots protest form, with women and nonbinary artists stitching messages against gender violence onto cloth. These textiles, often bearing the names of femicide victims or phrases like “Ni Una Menos” (Not One Less), act as quiet yet powerful testimonies.

  
  

• Reproductive Rights & Health: The Red Dress Project by British artist Kirstie Macleod has evolved into a global collaborative artwork. Women from over 50 countries, especially marginalised communities, have embroidered personal experiences onto the dress—highlighting stories of reproductive health, maternal mortality, and bodily autonomy through thread.

  
  

• Labour Rights: The Panchsheel Women’s Collective in India creates embroidered banners and quilts addressing workers’ rights in the garment industry—documenting wage theft, harassment, and the ongoing struggle for dignity in female-led labour sectors.

  
  

• Life & Grief: Vietnam’s Memory Quilt Project responds to the scars left by war —especially the effects of Agent Orange. Quilts created by survivors and descendants honour those lost, stitching remembrance into acts of collective healing.

  
  

• Understanding the Body (Social & Biological): The Red Thread Project in South Africa tackles menstrual stigma through stitched cloth works that trace biological cycles—challenging silence and shame, and calling for open, empowered recognition of bodily realities.

  
  

• The Body as Tool for Advocacy & Justice: Turkish artist Berrin Gungor’s performance Silent Protest sees her binding her own body in fabric—a visceral image of how women are physically and psychologically restrained by societal norms. Her silent, still presence confronts the viewer with the violence of this restraint, reclaiming the body as a site of resistance.

Through all these works, alongside the ones from the exhibition, textiles emerge not only as artistic expression but as radical witness—carrying the weight of oppression and the resilience of those who refuse to be erased. Whether addressing gender violence, labour exploitation, reproductive rights, or bodily autonomy, these fabric-based movements weave personal and collective struggles into acts of defiance.

Back at the Outhouse Gallery, with its resemblance to a home, the exhibition reclaims the domestic sphere—a space where women have historically been confined. But here, the house is reimagined: not as a place of restriction, but as a body, holding what is private and intimate within. Beyond its walls lies the land, the earth, mother nature—symbolising our right to work, to exist, to take up space. Inside, the house becomes a sanctuary: a place of reflection, resistance, and quiet defiance. It cocoons visitors in layers of body politics, where each work interweaves with the next, deepening meaning and forging connections. The exhibition has been curated in close collaboration with each artist—through conversation, exploration, and a shared commitment to pushing boundaries, both in practice and in presence.

A red thread runs through this exhibition—sometimes taut with tension, sometimes loose and swaying like breath. It appears in the artworks, the gallery walls, the ceiling and even outside, where a participatory installation invites the public to engage. This thread is both literal and symbolic: a lifeline, a vein, a link between us and generations. It echoes across geographies and bodies, holding memory, resistance, and care within its fibres. I chose it as the central image of this exhibition because it speaks of everything we hold together and how we carry it not alone, but bound to one another. It reminds us that while each story here is deeply personal, they are also part of a larger collective fabric.

Each label features a carefully selected excerpt from the poetry of Mina Loy, connecting the themes of the artworks to Loy’s pioneering feminist and modernist voice.

And finally, this exhibition is an act of reclamation—a space where textiles, sound, and body politics converge in resistance and renewal. Here, fabric is no longer passive; it is a witness, a weapon, a language of defiance. Voices long silenced now weave themselves into the present—unapologetic and uncontained. As visitors step through the doors of the Outhouse Gallery, they do not merely observe. They step into a living, breathing testament to the body’s fight for autonomy. In a world where patriarchy still dictates the boundaries of our bodies, and where men still dominate the art world, this is not just an exhibition, this is a declaration.

With love and care,

Veronica Revuelta Garrido

Curator of Hosiery Snip Space to a Triangular Racing Lace