The exhibition Political Fabrics explores how the medium of textiles can become a critical tool for examining political mechanisms and institutional structures. The creation of these works was inspired by the Velemi Archive, launched in 2024 to document the experimental textile movement, and the related exhibition *Re:TEXT*.
During the movement, which spanned from the late 1960s to the 1980s, textile art succeeded in transcending the objectives of decorative and utilitarian functions and became an autonomous art form. It achieved all this within a cultural–political context where art was classified according to the “3 Ts”—supported, tolerated, and banned. Textile art was considered harmless, as it was traditionally a medium associated with women and was not viewed as a primary arena for critical art. Thus, political censorship paid less attention to it than to painting or sculpture. This freedom opened up space for the genre; this period is often referred to as the golden age of textile art.
The aim of developing the exhibition concept was to put the state grant system in the arts to the test. It raises the question of what, in 2026—an election year, and thus a time marked by a more politically charged atmosphere than usual—can be considered state–supported art. The application was accepted—despite its openly system-critical nature—so the exhibition is being realized with the support of the National Cultural Fund. In this sense, the exhibition reflects on the relationship between a critical stance and state funding through the very conditions of its own creation.
Lala Tóth’s woven works are conceptual pieces that build upon the tradition established by the aforementioned experimental textile movement. The works presented in the exhibition articulate a critique of current political mechanisms and their social consequences. Weaving is a slow, time-consuming technique, and the artist often keeps abreast of current affairs while working. In this context, politics not only accompanies the creative process but also becomes the central theme of the works. She approaches the issues that concern her from the perspective of the textile medium, building upon its technical framework—including the appropriation of national symbols, mechanisms of power, and the workings of corruption.
The Fabric of Corruption is a pair of works consisting of a woven piece and a series of photographs that visualizes how corruption becomes an established practice within a system’s operation. In the case of the textile work, the fabric’s horizontal and vertical grid becomes a metaphor for the political system. It is made of snow-white thread, but the artist periodically smeared his hands with machine grease while creating the piece. This resulted in a color gradient on the large-scale textile work, and the same effect is visible in the photographs of his hands taken during the creation process.
Portrait of a Leader depicts a portrait of Viktor Orbán in his youth, but employs a technical twist that results in visual distortion in the image. This distortion raises the question of how personality is shaped by power. The warp threads—the vertically fixed threads that are first placed on the loom and through which the horizontal weaving takes place—have been pulled out of the finished fabric. This disrupted the cohesive force between the two axes, causing the fabric to begin unraveling, which the artist preserved with a Paraloid solution. The intervention affects the medium’s basic structure, so the work can also be interpreted through the lens of the mythological figures who shape the threads of fate—the Fates. In this reading, the disruption of the structure is not merely a formal gesture, but a questioning of the political system and a symbolic attempt to rewrite it.
The woven version of the Hungarian flag, Trikolor, was created using the same technique as Portrait of a Leader. With this gesture, the artist responds to the social polarization characteristic of the campaign period.
Counterbalancing this negative sentiment, the exhibition concludes with a participatory gesture. The Reappropriation of the Tricolor—Community Flag Weaving is an unfinished work that visitors can continue during the exhibition. The collective weaving, the recreation of the tattered flag, speaks both to the rehabilitation of a divided society and to the fact that national symbols cannot be appropriated by any single political party.
It need not be the task of the visual arts to take a stance in political life. However, it is its duty to use creative tools to highlight social problems, to make people think, to provoke, and to offer new perspectives. This is precisely the goal of the exhibition Political Weaves: to create a situation where art provides a starting point for collective thinking.
Boglárka Tóth