Textile Stories: A Living Archive is a platform where contemporary textile art, historical events, ancient techniques, and community traditions coexist. With a focus on Latin America, it explores how diverse voices can be gathered, connected, and represented in new ways to make knowledge more accessible and far-reaching.

Textile practices, shaped by historical and political contexts, have often been excluded from the traditional art historical canon and archives. Archiving, by its nature, tends to be exclusionary. Textile Stories approaches archiving as a participatory practice, working to close gaps in historical records while offering a space for self-representation.

Like handmade textiles, this archive is woven together by many hands and narrated through many voices. Inspired by the idea of textiles as “vessels of communication”—a concept embodied in Andean Quipus, knotted cords used to encode knowledge—this project recognizes textiles as carriers of memory and history. It emphasizes translation as an act of accessibility, enabling narratives to cross language barriers, connect cultures, and resonate across generations.

The archive is organized into three sections—Passing Knowledge, Communal Threads, and Material Transformation—highlighting the history of Latin American textiles through the work of contemporary women artists and historians who remain active participants in these practices.

This exhibition gives a glimpse into this ever-evolving archive.

Participants: Alejandra Mizrahi, Beatriz Morales, Cecilia Vicuña, María José Durán Steinman, María José Murillo, Milena Volonteri, Natalia Villanueva Linares, Tamara Marcos, Textiles Semillas, Andrei Fernández, and Victoria Martinez

Supported by: Goethe‑Institut Chicago and Logly