🪡 Unfolding, Unpicking, Repairing: an Interview with Delaine Le Bas
The Turner Prize nominee on stitching feminist histories, the ways textiles speak to us, and thinking back through our grandmothers
This summer, Delaine Le Bas took over the vast main gallery of Glasgow’s Tramway to create an immersive, richly textured world where multiple voices and visions collide. A space of protest, peace, pain, and communion, Le Bas’ Delainia: 17071965, Unfolding challenges the narratives that underpin our society and culture, confronting viewers with questions about their own complicity in power and prejudice that oppress marginalised communities. A slogan scrawled on the gallery wall warns ‘Beware Linguistic Engineering’, a sentiment that echoes through the exhibition, as Le Bas interrogates myths, stereotypes, and the exclusionary nature of the word.
To counter this, textiles and embellishments become part of Le Bas’ alternative system of making meaning. Layering vintage fabrics, images, embroidery, bric-a-brac, text, and audiovisual installation merge, each part of unfolding new stories that collapse the distance between centre and margin, historic and contemporary repression; the witch hunts and enclosure, Greenham Common, Brexit, the climate crisis, discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and Le Bas’s personal history are all stitched into the fabric of this exhibition.
Delainia: 17071965, Unfolding is a testament to the power of textiles to subvert power structures and speak louder than words. Decorating Dissidence’s Lottie Whalen spoke with Delaine Le Bas about the role of fabric and textiles in her life and practice, undervalued forms of making, and feminist histories. Keep scrolling for more!
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A Conversation with Delaine Le Bas
LW: Let’s start by talking about how you approached Tramway - it’s an incredible space but it must be quite daunting, how did you approach it?
DLB: It is very large! You have to make friends with it, that’s what we decided when we were first planning the exhibition. I thought about what I wanted to do and how it could emerge in that space.
Your use of textiles makes the space intimate and expansive at the same time. I loved the image of unfolding in the exhibition title, it perfectly captures the way the exhibition unfolds like a quilt as you explore the exhibition. Can we talk about why textiles are an important medium for you?
I grew up surrounded by textiles - in my home and we used to have clothes made for us as children - which led to my interest in fashion and printed textiles. I studied fashion and textiles at St Martin’s and that’s when I became really interested in what we’re trying to say when we wear particular colours, fabrics, or motifs. When I first left St Martin’s, I was focussed on painting, but I still embroidered and gradually I moved back to textiles.
I’ve always collected textiles and I began putting them together with my own work, bringing in embroidery. Witch Hunt, for example [an installation included as part of Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding], brings in vintage textiles. There’s a 1950s nursery textile which is quite frightening - children being chased by an adult with a bloody axe, and an Action Man quilt, why would you want to put your child to bed under a cover that’s got machetes and machine guns on?!Â
The other thing I’m interested in is, historically, what’s been lost. We might find fragments of materials in museums, but you wonder about all the things that have disappeared that were made from these wonderful fibres and colours.Â
It seems like that intimacy and attention to textiles has informed your approach in a very material, literal way…
Yes the unfolding was literal - the textiles have to be kept in a certain way so we were literally unfolding them as part of the installation, working out the structure of the fabrics. I’m also interested in the way textiles enable you to make structures that expand and contract. As an artist, you can make a site-specific exhibition, but the work is flexible enough to take it to another space. That way of working came about because I was initially working on projects where there often wasn’t a lot of money. With textiles, I could put the installation in a suitcase and transport it anywhere.Â
Sewing is also a sort of meditation for me. Going back to the idea of unfolding, I could take it wherever and do it on the move, sitting on a train. It’s a very practical medium.
It felt like you were also (re-)making a version of feminist history through this exhibition, weaving your personal history with larger themes, such as witchcraft. How important were those ideas as you put the exhibition together?Â
I’ve always been interested in witch hunts and goddesses. With the giant goddess [in Delainia], which is a metal frame covered in fabric, I wanted to make something that shouldn’t be outside but was exposed to the elements. Like the statue of Athena in the Acropolis that was made of wood, so of course it doesn’t exist anymore. And with the witch hunts, you can’t extricate them from capitalism - delving into that history gives you a different perspective on where we are now and why we’ve still got so many problems.Â
My Nan also had a massive influence on me. She grew up outside until she was 21 and she taught herself to read and write. Her and my grandfather, who was also an amazing man, created space for us, they encouraged us and showed us there were a lot of other opportunities for life out there.Â
It’s not been the easiest ride for many reasons - facing stereotypes and an opposition to me going to college, what I did wasn’t seen as valid - but my Nan made it a lot, lot easier.Â
Finally, you’re nominated for the Turner Prize this year, congratulations! The art world has changed a lot over the course of your career, with artists and ways of making that have been marginalised for a long time gaining recognition. Do you think these changes are here to stay and is there a risk that acceptance into institutions risks neutralising alternative forms of making?Â
For me, the only sadness is thinking about work that’s been lost by people who were in situations where they didn’t have support. I’ve seen suitcases of artwork at car boot sales that obviously haven’t been valued, and might end up at the rubbish tip. When I was involved with the first Roma Pavilion in 2007, we received files of great work but some files weren’t good enough quality to be added to the digital archive, so I don’t know what’s happened to it now. There’s a lot of interesting work from so many different communities that’s been lost because it wasn’t seen as valid.Â
The good thing is that there’s now been this groundswell of collecting and showing work. It’s great to be given the opportunity to exhibit at Tate Britain, to different audiences. I feel grateful that I’m among a great set of artists [Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, and Jasleen Kaur].Â
At the same time, it’s an awful situation with funding and an erosion of spaces to work and exhibit. But I think some people always persist. And it’s really important that, as artists, we support each other in the best way that we can, even if that’s just attending a private view or buying a small piece of work from someone, if we’ve got the money.
A huge thank you to Delaine for taking the time to speak with us. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding is on at Glasgow’s Tramway until 13 October 2024
Dalaine’s work is also on show at Tate Britain as part of the Turner Prize 2024 exhibition, alongside the other three shortlisted artists, Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, and Jasleen Kaur (25 September - 16 February 2025).
Further Reading