Every Tangle of Thread and Rope
At Tate Modern, Until 21 May 2023
Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work is showcased at Tate Modern in an exhibition that perfectly captures her ideas about nature’s power and the individual’s place in it. Her huge fabric sculptures hang ominously, threatening to engulf those who walk around them. The installation is daunting, suffocating, and breathtaking all at once.The exhibition starts with smaller and more sedate works that are dark, naturalistic abstractions filled with organic forms.
These early works were unacceptable in 1950s Poland, where individual expression had to serve the common good. However, the state encouraged cooperation between designers, craftspeople, and artisans, which led Abakanowicz to lose herself in the looms. Her early tapestries are somber abstracts of brown, beige, and tan wool, resembling age-old carpets worn and tattered by centuries of use.As Abakanowicz evolved, so did her tapestries, taking on freer, more naturalistic forms.
They became curved and cut, pierced and undulating, looking more like bison hides than tapestries. Ropes, hessian sacks, animal horns, and human faces wrapped in common appear nearby, all fibrous, twisted, and knotted, like ancient fossils recently dug up.
As Abakanowicz evolved, so did her tapestries, taking on freer, more naturalistic forms. They became curved and cut, pierced and undulating, looking more like bison hides than tapestries. Ropes, hessian sacks, animal horns, and human faces wrapped in common appear nearby, all fibrous, twisted, and knotted, like ancient fossils recently dug up.
The exhibition becomes more bodily in the final main space, with a huge pair of black lungs, piles of corpse-like burlap sacks, suspended internal organs, and massive labial folds. Here, nature has fused with the individual, creating a world where nature’s power has swallowed up the state, the past, and the individual, leaving behind nothing but the organic, the ancient, and the beautiful.
Poland’s history, with its forests bisected by train tracks that led to concentration camps, its plains as sites of battle, and its beaches soaked with blood, adds to the exhibition’s historical and emotional weight. Abakanowicz’s work is beautiful, staggering, and uncomfortable, reeking of history and a past trying to reclaim the present.
The only complaint about the exhibition is that there is not enough of it. Abakanowicz had a long, varied career, and one is left hungry to lose oneself in even more of her work. Nevertheless, what is on display is awe-inspiring, showcasing a huge, dark world where nature’s power dominates, leaving behind only the organic, the ancient, and the beautiful.
Website: Tate Modern