Textile Art at The Armory Show, 2022

Hey friend, I attended this year’s Armory Show at the Javits Center in Manhattan, New York City and I want to share the experience with you. I was very interested in seeing textile art at the Armory Show. How well is it being shown? How widely shown is it? What are some of the the techniques being used? And what is the overall collector interest in purchasing textile art at the armory show? These are the questions I had.

In this post I’ll share with you some of the works I was able to see and enjoy. I must say the Javits Center is a really large space. After two hours of walking the fair grounds I can’t say I saw everything that was on display. It was a truly invigorating visual experience. Galleries from all over the world were present with a variety of artworks to keep you constantly engaged for as long as you could walk around to discover them. Like I said, after two hours I was beat. Maybe, I should have taken a break and gone back for a second tour to see some of the works I missed the first time around.

Techniques: Textile Art at the Armory Show

Overall, my experience was a great one. I was pleased to see a strong showing of textile art at The Armory Show presented by both US galleries and international galleries as well. Discovering the different ways in which artists are using the textile medium to create art was really fascinating to me.

I saw works by an artist – JP Mika- who uses sewn fabric as his canvas and then paints on top of that with acrylic and glitter. I also saw works by the artist – Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola. He uses durags (fabric head coverings for Black hair), sewn together in intricate ways and stretched on canvas. There were also the works of Cornelieus Annor who uses fabric transfer and acrylics on canvas.

Another set of fascinating works of textile art at The Armory show were by Norwegian artist Ane Graff. Her works were wall hangings of hand painted and printed silk as well as sculptures. Her glass sculptures are each filled with colorful mixtures and they reference mental illnesses like Memory loss, Brain fog and depression.

Furthermore, some other textile based artists at the show you should definitely check out are Jordan Nassar who creates hand embroideries on cotton. And that of Sagarika Sundaram who creates exquisite works with wool and botanical dyes .

Praise for Textile Art at The Armory Show

Like I said, textile-based work made a very strong showing at the show. Here’s a blog that shows some of the “textured” art at the Armory Show. And finally, here’s an article that points out what a strong showing of textile art was at this year’s Armory Show. Below is a quote from that article

[They] created a harmony between textiles and figurative painting—which was a larger trend seen across the fair. Strong support for textile-based work seen in many booths may be due to museum exhibitions in recent years that have course-corrected the art historical canon. Craft-based work at The Armory Show was not only selling, but selling well, accounting for some of the top sales of the day.

Ayana Dozier, The 10 Best Booths at The Armory Show 2022

In conclusion, it was definitely worth my time to go see and experience all of this amazing textile art at the Armory Show. The Show is definitely on my list to visit again. Friend, if you ever get a chance to visit the Armory Show, take it. You won’t be disappointed.

Warmest Regards,

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Also published on Medium.