BODY’S FIRST ARCHITECTURE

Exhibition Dates: June 29 - August 10, 2025   

Opening Reception: Sunday June 29, 1-3pm
The Ely Center for Contemporary Art is thrilled to present Body’s First Architecture, a group show curated by the artists Tamar Ettun and Leeza Meksin, exploring the various ways in which fabric and clothing are being employed by contemporary artists foregrounding the body's needs for healing and care. The exhibition features works by Anindita Dutta, Ann Hamilton, Florencia Escudero, Hannah Woo, Leeza Meksin, LoVid, Michelle Segre, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Rachel Hayes, Rose Nestler, Sheila Pepe, Sheilah ReStack, Sopheak Sam, Suzanne Mcclelland & Alix Pearlstein, TAITAI xTina, Tamar Ettun, and Tsedaye Makonnen.

Body’s First Architecture considers the primary and fundamental nature of textiles as the body's first dwelling. Taking its premise from Ann Hamilton’s interview in which she says “Textiles are the body's first house, the body's first architecture."* This statement alludes both to textile’s relationship to the domestic as well as to the nomadic. There is something about the nature of textile that lends itself for travel — it can be packed small, transported relatively easily, made with modest resources while growing expansive and commanding space. For this exhibition, Ettun and Meksin, selected multiple large scale works, which fluidly interact with the unique and historical architecture of the Ely Center. Several of the works are site-specific or site-responsive, hanging in staircases, windows or visually joining the first and second floors. 

Body’s First Architecture brings together artists working in many media, including sculpture, installation, video, photography, textiles, painting, wearable art, and performance. Through attending to the body and highlighting its needs, a larger possibility for healing our troubled world comes into view. The inherent nature of working with textiles includes weaving, sewing, joining, mending and repairing. Working in this way now offers a surprisingly new (yet ancient) approach to our world’s problems. The work of mending textile and sewing pieces together, literally and figuratively creates connection and interconnectedness rather than tearing things apart. Meanwhile, the softness and malleability of fabric stands in contrast to the rigid, unyielding geometry of our dwellings, helping us find a way to heal through touch, playfulness, color and the hand-made. 

Many ancient societies, including the Greek, Roman and Mesopotamian, focused on the metaphor of weaving (the essential structure of warp and weft), as symbols of bringing together opposing points of view during civil strife. Ritual garments, such as cloaks, veils and overcoats, were often made as offerings to divinites during war time and transitions of power, and physically placed on the statue of the divinity.* It comes as no surprise then, that during our currently polarized political and social climate, textiles have taken central stage in contemporary art. Body’s First Architecture explores the different approaches taken by artists to investigate the soft power and grand possibilities that using fabric in art offers today.

The exhibition will be on view from June 29 through Sunday, August 10. Please join us for the opening on Sunday, June 29, 1-3pm. The artist/curators and many of the participating artists will be in attendance.

*Interview with Ann Hamilton and Krista Tippett  in On Being, 

https://onbeing.org/programs/ann-hamilton-making-and-the-spaces-we-share/

*The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric by Jasper Svenbro and John Scheid, Translated by Carol Volk, Harvard University Press, 1996.