Through their textile works, each artist tells personal or social stories that echo with the viewer’s life experience. They use their needle as painters use their brush to depict moments or memories that had an impact in their life. Some artists reuse clothes for the sole purpose of telling the story of the person who wore it. In fact, the potential for garment to reckon with personal stories lies with its inherent association of proximity and intimacy with the body.

Nnenna Okore

Nnenna Okore was born in 1975 in Canberra, Australia, and raised in Nsukka, Nigeria. In 1995, she began her studies in painting at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where she developed a technique to create unique surface textures using soil, rope, fabric, and other found objects. In 2005, she obtained her masters of fine arts at the University of Iowa, and started working as a professor of Art, while opening her studio. Okore is deeply committed to environmental sustainability and focuses her art on themes of nature, waste, and climate change. Her practice is influenced by the philosophy of creating innovative artistic forms with recycled materials. She creates large-scale textile installations by weaving, sewing, dyeing, and teasing materials like burlap, wire, and paper, often sourced from West Africa. In 2023, Okore installed a site-specific sculptural work called Spirit Dance in the Stanley Museum of Art in Iowa. The work was inspired by the African concept that all forms, including humans, nonhumans, and spirits, possess an agentic force that is capable of doing things.

Georgina Maxim

Georgina Maxim was born in 1980 in Harare, Zimbabwe. In 2004, she completed her studies in fine arts at the Chinhoyi University of Technology, and later earned a master's degree in visual arts from the University of Bayreuth in Germany in 2019. After completing her initial studies, she started teaching visual arts at the Prince Edward School, while managing a renowned contemporary art gallery in Harare. In 2012, Maxim co-founded Village Unhu, a collective arts space that provides exhibition spaces and residency programs for artists. She also developed an artistic practice based on textiles, using sewing, weaving, and embroidery to repurpose used clothes. She creates unique pieces that act as vessels of memory or untold stories, translating every stich into the emotions of the clothes’ previous owner. She considers the repetitive and meditative nature of her sewing as an act of self-healing and reflection. In Telling Moments (2024), Maxim reflected on time and recollection, displaying the significance of how time is used, accumulated, and valued.

Acaye Kerunen

Acaye Kerunen was born in 1981 in Kampala, Uganda. She graduated with a bachelor in communication from the Islamic University in Uganda in 2009. For many years, Kerunen did not consider herself an artist, as the art that interested her was not taught in her school system. Her education favored a colonial perspective conveyed in English, a language she learned at the expense of her native languages. Now, she uses local dialects to title her work, honoring her heritage and the women she collaborates with. Her textile sculptures evoke craft-based practices local to Kampala including objects created with natural fibers through hand stitching, knotting, and weaving techniques passed down by her mother. Kerunen reflects on themes of presence, memory, motherhood, and liberation, with pieces featuring fluid, intricate lines and shapes. She is also concerned with issues of climate change as seen in her sculptural installation Ayelele (2023), which means “anything that came from the earth will return to the earth”. It was made partly with raffia palm trees that grow in wetlands whose conservation is threatened by the current ecological crisis.