Talking textiles with artists Maja Bajević and Shinique Smith

In this artist talk, recorded at Art Basel in Basel 2024, hear esteemed artists Maja Bajević and Shinique Smith speak with writer, critic and curator Enuma Okoro, about how they incorporate textiles within their works.

In her introduction, Mary Rozell, Global Head of the UBS Art Collection, considers why there is a renewed appreciation for textile-based art today including a striking number of works in the Collection. She wondered if the focus on this medium - more commonly associated with women – is a reflection of women’s increased representation in the art market, or whether the handmade nature of textile art offers an antidote to ever-increasing technology in art production as well as our daily lives.

Continuing this thread, Enuma begins the conversation reflecting on the power of textile-based works, adding that “they're important forms of communication, they're important forms of passing down tradition, they're important forms of telling histories.” Though often we think of textiles in connection with their practical function, Enuma notes that the medium brings us back to “what is beautiful and what is a form of storytelling.“

Since the beginnings of her artistic career in the late-90s, French-Bosnian artist Maja Bajević has incorporated embroidery within her works. Today, the typically “female labor” of embroidery is a core part of her artistic practice which often poses questions about the female condition. Forging lifelong connections in her practice, Maja has worked with the same craftsperson to stitch her artworks since 1999. “It's also weaving connections in between people through work” she says, adding “it's the time that you invest into someone [that] makes the relation… [it’s] what connects you for life.”

“I think my attraction to cloth probably began first in my grandmother's house,” says American artist Shinique Smith. Smith remembers her first experiences with textiles while helping her grandmother with laundry chores. “I would play in between these drapes and you could smell sunlight on the fabric,” she adds. Known today for her iconic large-scale ‘Bale Variant’ sculptures, which tie together human stories through garments that are often used or disowned, she says “I see fabric as a fluid thing... I could take all your clothes and all your experiences and memories attached to it and put it into one equalizing gesture, but this also explores how we're connected through [textiles].”

This talk was inspired by the exhibition “Threads,” presented in the UBS Lounge at Art Basel in Basel 2024, which brought together textile-based works in the UBS Art Collection. The centrepiece of the display was a commissioned work by Maja Bajević which consisted of embroidered artworks that reflect on the concept of time in relation to challenges faced by women and were installed over designs created by hand with pattern paint rollers.

Watch a studio interview with Maja Bajević here: