Isabella Ducrot's Textile Exhibition at Museo delle Civiltà Recontextualizes Collection Through Weaving

The exhibition WEAVING IS HUMAN at Museo delle Civiltà in Rome features nonagenarian artist Isabella Ducrot, who has gained recent international fame after decades of work. Ducrot's first international solo museum show occurred this summer at the Consortium in Dijon. The museum, holding over two million artefacts, launched a decolonisation programme in 2022, collaborating with artists to reinterpret its collection. Ducrot's works, including Turbante (2015), a 11-metre-long silk turban on paper, are displayed in the central atrium on yellow panels. Her pieces dialogue with historical textiles like a nineteenth-century Japanese Katabira and a Lima culture cotton dress from 200–650 CE. Ducrot's Bende Sacre series (2012–18) uses Tibetan scarves as abstract art, while Arazzo Rilke (2020) features ink writing on fabric. A Bronze Age fabric fragment highlights ancient weaving techniques. Ducrot's book The Checkered Cloth (2019) argues weaving's Neolithic origins reflect calculated innovation. The exhibition runs through 16 February 2025, exploring textiles' cultural and colonial histories.