Weaving Anni Albers: Film Explores Textile Modernity Beyond Celebration

Alessandro Del Vigna's film 'Weaving Anni Albers' premiered at Milan Design Week 2025 during an exhibition at Torre Velasca, produced by Dedar with support from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. The film avoids chronological biography, instead using archival materials from the Albers Foundation and close-ups of contemporary weaves to draw analogies between weaving and coded systems like the Voynich Manuscript. Sound design treats the loom's rhythm as temporal architecture, while voiceover from Albers' theoretical writings questions limits and function. The film also documents contemporary fabric production based on Albers' designs from the 1930s-1970s, emphasizing continuity of method over formal replication. Screenings include the Ji.hlava International Film Festival, the Paul Rudolph Institute in New York, and the Maysles Documentary Center. Anni Albers (1899-1994) entered the Bauhaus in 1922, where women were often relegated to the textile workshop, which became a site of radical experimentation. In 1949 she became the first textile artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, marking textiles' entry into modernist art. The film reframes the loom as a modernist machine and Albers as an active node in debates between art, design, and production.