Visual artist, researcher and journalist covering the contemporary art scene in the North of England, with a focus on exhibitions and gallery projects in Manchester.
By Katerina Karp, visual artist, volunteer, journalist, creative lead
Some of the oldest known examples of textiles have been found in great detail, along with many similarities to modern forms. Common in textiles is the metaphorical use of the word “weave,” which means to create connections or tie things together. When textiles are mended, they represent our care for others; when they unravel, they reveal new truths about our past and present. The stories and meanings carried within each thread are rooted in the lives of every human being who has spun, held, worn, manipulated or passed on a piece of textile. Textiles have a close relationship to our bodies through use, but they also relate to memory, identity, and imagination. Through textiles, we learn from our past lives, present lives, and the potential for future growth as a society.
Threads of Connection unfolds as a transhistorical tapestry where five distinct objects from Chinese Culture Gallery at the Manchester Museum, created across centuries and with different intentions, enter a shared dialogue. Though their forms vary – silk robe, embroidered shoes, smart jacket, moving landscape, painted scroll – each piece explores textile as a medium of connection: between cultures, between humans and environments, between tradition and technology, between past and future. But all five tell the same story about the connections created between humanity and the natural world, as well as between past, present and future, and the evolution of textile technology.
This essay traces the threads that bind them.
I. The Thread of Body: Cloth as Protection, Constraint and Care Textiles were first created with the human body as the focus both in creating protective clothing, shaping clothing and creating clothing that restricted movement. The recent creation of the Firefighter’s Smart Jacket continues this historical relationship. With sensors and antennas embedded in it, the Smart Jacket listens to and reacts to changes in a firefighter’s heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, and the level of stress they feel. The materials used in the Smart Jacket allow it to transform the previous role of the clothing item from that of a passive barrier to that of an active partner in the health and safety of the firefighter. Thus, the threads of the Smart Jacket become the medium through which data is transferred, warnings are sent, and information is received that can save a firefighter’s life. The Smart Jacket represents a true integration of technology into the long-standing idea of clothing as protection.
On the other hand, the Shoes for Bound Feet tell a different story of how textiles can limit or even harm the body, as well as serve to protect the body. The folded silk threads of the shoes become indicative of the power dynamics and gendered experiences that have existed through time. In this sense, the Shoes for Bound Feet serve as a reminder of the fact that while textiles can be a gentle or violent medium, they can also serve to record the power relationships of their time. In conjunction, these two types provide the duality of the human experience of the body woven into the overall tapestry. As an example of how textiles can serve to protect the body or restrict the movement of the body, textiles provide both ways for humans to connect with their environment and humanity.
II. The Thread of Power: Silk as Cosmic Order and Political Narrative
The Dragon Robe of the Qing Dynasty is the embodiment of the weight of a universe; sewn with the imperial dragons, waves of the ocean, and auspicious clouds of fortune. The robe was worn by Official Duanfang at the twilight of the Qing Dynasty, and is an example of a woven cosmos with power, status, and cosmic respect associated with every motif. The dragons were eight claws, asserting their dominance; whilst cranes, promoting longevity; and the waves and mountains along the hem anchoring the body into the universal structure.
But the robe is also a story of fracture. Duanfang’s career – marked by reform, travel, ambition and violent death during the 1911 Revolution – exposes the fragility of systems that claim divine order. When the robe entered British hands through missionary John Rodwell, it accumulated yet another layer: the complex history of cultural contact, influence, extraction and preservation.
Here textile becomes a political thread – carrying ideas of authority, diplomacy, and empire across continents. Silk, in this sense, is less a material than a language.
III. The Thread of Land: Weaving and Unweaving the Earth
We also see what will be labelled as the textile of the land – i.e., it has been referred to within many cultures throughout history as a weaving or unwinding of the earth, but in this particular project, they specifically reference ‘The Restoring of the Loess Plateau’. It shows an example of how over centuries, a region has been destroyed due to erosion and continuing poor agricultural practices, and then through the concerted efforts of a people, by terracing the land and planting trees and restoring the soil, the people have rewoven the fabric of the land and have reinforced it the same way as you would mend a piece of material or clothing.
A display of the landscape as a textile: Vertical and horizontal strata, with fragility or strength depending on the human hand. This view offers a contrast to the predominant western myth of China only being a “polluter,” as it is also a story of how the land has been repaired ecologically, through cooperation within the landscape. The land becomes a textile woven by many, representing an ecological thread connecting us to the future.
IV. The Thread of Everyday Life: A Scroll as a Moving Fabric of Society
The Emperor Kangxi’s Birthday Scroll measures 22 metres in length and opens up like a street made of ink and paper. It captures a moving panoply of Beijing in all its forms: vendors, children; cattle; carts; performers; incense sellers; teahouses; bilingual signs; and everything else in between. Each piece is a micro-stitch in an enormous social fabric.
While it is a celebration of the Emperor’s longevity, the scroll is also a depiction of daily life of the average citizen. A textile of perspective on how the city works together as a woven city. This is one way to connect people into a community, and communities into a country.
Its journey to Manchester, via the Earl of Crawford and Enriqueta Rylands, adds another layer. Just as the scroll depicts networks of trade and movement in 18th-century Beijing, its British provenance speaks to Manchester’s own textile-driven global entanglements – including the industrial wealth built on cotton and the exploitation embedded within it.
The scroll becomes a mirror, reflecting the threads of both Chinese and British histories.
V. The Thread of Generation: Young Creators Weaving New Future
Alongside these historical and contemporary objects stand the works of SODA Year 2 students, who use digital media, 3D print, sound, and immersive technologies to reinterpret textile beyond its physical limits. Their works form a new generational thread – one that connects emerging creators with ancient techniques, ancestral stories, and future possibilities.
Objects don’t only exist to illustrate or respond to, but they are reconstructed and woven or rewoven through metaphorical means. Objects have meaning and interpretations unravelled and reinterpreted, and threads of new meaning are woven into the tapestry of our collective memory.
The idea that Heritage will continue to change through ongoing reinterpretation is advanced through the intergenerational dialogue that weaves the fabric of the project. This dialogue exemplifies the principles of Tapestry; The memory of our ancestors’ production exists in the past, the current production process (the creation) is our present and the legacy of our work providing the foundation for the next generation to build upon.
Tapestry: The Way You and I Weave Together as a Community, will create a single weave of the five objects I have selected and digital works created by the students from SODA.
The Five Objects from the Manchester Museum and new Digital Works Are Composite Tapestries of Ideas: Thread of Protection – in the Smart Jacket; Thread of Constraint – in The Bound-Foot Shoes; Thread of Power – in the Dragon Robe (an example of cultural importance); Thread of Land – in The Loess Plateau; Thread of Society – in The Painted Scroll; and, Thread of Renewal – in the Student Creations.
All of the textiles shown represent a dichotomy of life and death; Beauty and pain; Order and chaos; Fragility and strength; Past and future. The relationship between textiles is a physical relationship, so, therefore, everything that is created using them is connected in a spiritual sense as well as a material one.
The connection you feel to and with all other people are all part of a greater whole of the world. Many things connect us together. If you treat the threads you create with care and respect, you will create a tapestry of shared experiences.
In this project, the cloth is more than just cloth. It is a map of interpersonal connections. It is an accounting of experience. It is a pathway between worlds. In a way, it offers the same possibility for the future that the fabric offers, the ability to re-create itself.
Information about selected objects (Chinese Gallery, Manchester Museum):
• Smart Clothing – Firefighter’s Jacket. A firefighter’s jacket developed in the EU’s H2020 ETexWeld project, designed to monitor vital signs like heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, and humidity, as well as body motion, impulses, and local blood pressure changes. Professor Henry Yi Li and his team at the University of Manchester are at the forefront of this research, working with twelve international partners, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, on an EU-funded project.
• Dragon Robe. This Dragon Robe was made for Duanfang, a prominent Chinese governor assassinated during the 1911 revolution. It was later brought to the UK by missionary John Rodwell.
• Shoes for Bound Fee. Collected in 1947 by Mary Gavin Clarke, author and headmistress of the Manchester High School for Girls from 1924–1945 • Restoring the Loess Plateau. This is more of a museum display illustrating the story of the Loess Plateau rather than an object. Therefore, it is not historically significant. The display focuses on deforestation and the depletion of water resources, especially those that occurred after the Qing dynasty. • Emperor Kangxi’s Birthday Scroll. Loaned by John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the University of Manchester (Chinese Crawford 419), Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
