University Art Gallery exhibition showcases repurposed textiles to connect community and history.
By Andrea Ambriz, Executive Editor
Textiles take center stage this fall at the University Art Gallery, where a new exhibition is showing how fabric can become more than material.
The “Intertwine” exhibition brings together Los Angeles-based artists who use thread, cloth and repurposed materials to explore what it means to be “mutually connected or entangled.” By focusing on textiles as both material and metaphor, the show highlights how art can reflect the ties that bind people to one another.
Opening night on Sept. 13 welcomed artists, students and community members for a public reception. Guests moved through the gallery, pausing to take in embroidered text, stitched curtains and digital weavings while engaging in conversations with each other and with the artists.
Aandrea Stang, the director of the University Art Gallery, curated the show after following the artists’ work for more than a decade. Her vision, she said, was to bring together the work of textile and text as elements people encounter daily.
“Textile is such an everyday element for all of us, but it’s something that we rarely think about,” Stang said. “You know, we can’t leave the house without textile, right? Clothes, pants, whatever, and yet we rarely think about who made it or how it was made.”
The exhibition features cotton, wool, chiffon, and recycled fabric—materials not always considered art—that, in the hands of the artists, take on layered meaning.
Visual artist Vita Kari uses textiles to connect digital culture with family history. Inspired by their grandmother’s rugs, Kari’s work investigates internet culture, diaspora and the personal experience of being deaf or hard of hearing through weaving, video and performance. They explained to The Bulletin that their practice is “based in virality.”
“They both have a really similar structure, and they use the same color format. So if you look really close at a screen, it actually looks exactly like the weave of a textile,” Kari said. “I basically try to connect my heritage with my viral practice by making textiles that are both digitally woven.”
Alexis Zoto is another artist whose work is showcased at the gallery. Zoto, a professor of art and design at the University of Southern California, creates intricate collections from recycled fabrics and found objects, often layered with embroidered text. Although Zoto came to weaving later in her career—inspired by research and interviews with weavers in Albania—she was drawn to the universality of the work.
“It’s also a super ancient, worldwide craft … the materials are really accessible,” Zoto said. “I use materials that are, like, from my house and from my children. Like old sheets, old clothes, dry cleaning bags. All of these things, like, I just throw it in there.”
Not all of the artists created their work specifically for Intertwine. Stang curated pieces that spoke to each other when placed in dialogue across the gallery walls.
“It’s more nuanced because you have different artists that are looking at different themes,” Stang explained. “Self-reflective themes and then themes that are looking more globally.”
The word “intertwine” has artistic meaning to Zoto, but takes on particular significance in light of current events across the world. She described the act of making as being tied closely to her own experience and conversations.
“I think for me right now, a lot of my work is really about what’s happening now and what I’m feeling,” she said.
Kari echoed Zoto’s sentiment, saying the idea of “Intertwine” relates to concepts of intersectionality and interconnectivity. “Especially with deafness, which is, you know, definitely something that comes up in my work because I am a person that has hearing loss—and that’s why, the faces are hidden or unwoven in the pieces.”
At its core, “Intertwine” asks viewers to reflect on what it means to be connected—whether through memory, shared histories, or the literal act of weaving threads together. A chiffon curtain patterned with images from global protests, stitched phrases paired with paint, and years of hand embroidery remind visitors that textiles are more than decoration: they carry stories of resilience and identity.
The exhibition is on display at the University Art Gallery until Oct. 4.
“I hope that they go a little deeper than just looking at the first level, which is the color, the texture, the beautiful objects,” Stang said. “Start to think about the conceptual ideas that are backing up the work. How we choose to present ourselves and what the works are really saying.”