16 June 2023

Vienna Insight: The exhibition 'Threads of Life' presents the theme 'Textiles' and provokes thoughts about the human lifespan and materials as survival tools; Fashion.at asked DALL-E for a visualization.

Today, Fashion.at read the press release and further information about the exhibition 'Threads of Life - Textiles in Medicine and the Arts', which explores the use of textiles in both the fields of medicine and art. The exhibition was curated by a team from the transdisciplinary working group History of Medicine and Medical/Health Humanities of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It was opened on 13 June and will be on show until the 14 July at the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab (AIL) of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The AIL for art, science and artistic research is located in the Otto-Wagner-Postsparkasse at the Georg-Coch-Platz in Vienna's 1st district. At the website of the AIL at ail.angewandte.at/program/threads-of-life, the exhibition is introduced with a text about the topics centering around the role of textiles in medical practice, from surgical threads and wound dressings to protective clothing and hospital beds with an exploration of the relationship between textiles, art, and well-being, including the application of textile techniques in medical developments and the use of textiles in artistic expressions.

On the University of Applied Arts' Facebook page, insights into the exhibition are published with a more detailed description of the exhibits on display, which reads like a life-survival story that humans cannot win. It ends with death. But the struggles are the challenges people go through to grow beyond themselves. The images posted on FB show historical objects alongside contemporary artistic positions to create a dialog between textiles, medicine and art. Included are, for example, historical laying-out photos from the early 20th century showing the mourning ceremony with the deceased dressed in the 'last shirt', a self-sewn jacket of a psychiatric patient embroidered with biographical and other texts, or an artwork that addresses medicine and queerness.

The participating artists are Sonja Bäumel, Pascale Maxime Ballieul, Camille Borchert, Ida Flora Frantal, Raja Goltz, Barbara Graf, Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond, Elizabeth McGlynn, Ute Neuber, Katharina Sabernig, Hannah Schwab, Yuliia Strykovska, Leo Ruben Enosch Zellweger. The opening dates for 'Threads of Life - Textiles in Medicine and the Arts' are published on ail.angewandte.at/program/threads-of-life.

Images: Fashion.at was interested in how DALL-E would visualize the following prompt inspired by the exhibition theme: "An artistic interpretation of a medical fabric symbolizing 'Threads of Life' worn by a model as a mourning dress." On view are four images generated at openai.com/dall-e-2, DALL·E 2023-06-16 17.12.26.
The left image shows a ballerina's dress with a blue ribbon, perhaps reminiscent of the blue ribbons worn by stars at the 2023 Oscars in support of UNHCR's #WithRefugees efforts. These days, the blue ribbon brings to mind the hundreds of people on a migrant boat that recently sank off Greece; according to an article on BBC, no-one on board wore life jackets.