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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
Textile agency in the artwork of Monika

Žaltauskaitė Grašienė

Odeta Žukauskienė *
1,2
1 Department of Humanities, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius, Lithuania
2 Department of Comparative Culture Studies, Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Vilnius, Lithuania

Abstract

The article explores textiles as a medium of perceptual thinking through an analysis
of the metaphors present in the artworks of contemporary Lithuanian artist Monika
Žaltauskaitė Grašienė. This research is framed by the metatextile discourse, which
reconceptualizes textiles and resonates with material turn focused on the agentic
powers of matter. Within the article, various textile metaphors are discussed,
highlighting the connections between textiles and concepts such as text, skin, body,
memory, identity, past and present technologies, everyday life, and nature. Monika
Žaltauskaitė Grašienė, in her visual work, challenges subject and object, nature and
culture, and material and immaterial dualities. She animates flexible metaphors of
cloth, folding, and the act of folding itself, contributing to new discourses for textiles
and expanding the ontology of tissue to reflect our fluid identities and networked
beings.

Keywords: Textile art; Metatextile; Matter; Fold; Monika Žaltauskaitė Grašienė

*Corresponding author:
Odeta Žukauskienė
(odeta.zukauskiene@gmail.com) 1. Introduction: From textile to metatextile
Citation: Žukauskienė O, 2023,
Textile agency in the artwork of Textile is the central element in all of Monika Žaltauskaitė Grašienė’s work (abbreviatedly
Monika Žaltauskaitė Grašienė. signing in the name of Žaltė) . Her art reveals the contours of metatextile, a concept
1
Arts & Communication, 1(2): 1867. that goes beyond mere fabric, encompassing cloth, matter, and texture, extending its
https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1867
reach to embrace all living and non-living surfaces and the deep substances underneath.
Received: September 19, 2023 Moreover, metatextile perceives the creative work itself as a multidimensional fabric.
Accepted: October 19, 2023 As Tristan Weddingen, the editor of the volume Metatextile: Identity and History of a
Contemporary Art Medium, pointed out, the relevance of textiles as a medium of art
Published Online: November 3, 2023
emerged in the 1990s and is evidenced by the exhibitions of the early 21 century .
[1]
st
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). The Lausanne Biennale inspired a textile discourse that links art practice to theory,
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the reflecting on the world of materials, their agency in reality, and hitherto undisclosed
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution, 1 Monika Žaltauskaitė-Grašienė (born 1975) is a renowned Lithuanian artists representing
and reproduction in any medium, textile art on the local and global art stage, and she is a member of the European Textile
provided the original work is
properly cited. Network. She has held over 20 solo exhibitions. Her works have been shown at contemporary
art biennials, festivals, and textile art exhibitions. Her significant appearance at the Saatchi
Publisher’s Note: AccScience Gallery in 2015 was accompanied by her participation in the Art_textiles exhibition at the
Publishing remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, also in 2015. In 2021, she was awarded the Golden
published maps and institutional Muse statuette presented by the Lithuanian Artists’ Association for her distinguished body of
affiliations. work.

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1867