A scrim (mesh fabric) is a lightweight, open-weave fabric used primarily in theatrical performances and veils. Depending on the lighting, the scrim can be visible or invisible, and it often serves as reinforcement for repairing damaged fabrics. Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby wrote “Always Thinking Like A Scrim”1, and just as a scrim can be both visible and invisible, depending on the lighting, our experience of the world is shaped by multiple, often overlapping facets.

For this unfolding show, Shimmer explores the lifecycle of fabric, and through the action of making we enter into the deep. Textiles speak a language that crosses cultures, but also goes underneath them, providing opportunities to talk about things that you can not say in any other medium. From the pollution caused by the mass consumption of textiles, to the canvas stretched as an image, from the swaddling cloth in which we are wrapped at birth to the clothes we choose to be buried in, we see fabric as a barometer of our lives.

In Always Thinking Like a Scrim the minuscule hand-drawn lines by Matt Hinkley ripple-like lace curtains to the layering of wools and fabrics, held in a space between transparency and opacity by Liz Magor whereas Hana Miletić weaves us reflections on the social and cultural realities in which the artist herself works. Always Thinking Like A Scrim begins in March and changes in June with works by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Cihad Caner, Daniel Giles, Lotus L. Kang and Tenant of Culture (part 2).

Plaited through the exhibition are events programmed by artist Meghan Clarke as part of our Sunday Morning with… event program (more information on this to come).

Thank you to Gemeente Rotterdam, Mondriaan Fonds, The Approach, London and Marcelle Alix, Paris, we’re so grateful for your support.