Magdalena Abakanowicz - We Are Fibrous Structures

Magdalena Abakanowicz
We Are Fibrous Structures
August 8–October 24, 2021

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s exhibition We Are Fibrous Structures marks the naming of the University of the Arts Poznan (Poland) after the artist. For 25 years Magdalena Abakanowicz was a faculty member of the Poznań State School of Fine Arts.

The motto of the show, We Are Fibrous Structures, is a quote from Magdalena Abakanowicz’s 1978 lecture at the Fiberworks symposium at Berkeley. The artist saw the endless potential of fibre, until then treated in a purely utilitarian fashion. For her, fibre was the basic component of the organic world, the building block of all living organisms, plants, tissues, leaves, and the human body.
Abakanowicz undermined thinking about the utilitarian role of textiles, previously seen as a craft. The revolution she initiated when she first showed her work at the 1962 Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne had a major impact on the development of this art worldwide. As a teacher at the Poznań School, the artist revolutionized the earlier curriculum of fiber and weaving instruction, developing it from the start as an art discipline in its own right.

Curator: Anna Borowiec Arrangement of exhibition: Rafał Górczyński

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan.