Entangled and Woven review – exquisitely spun textiles that cross borders, culture and time

Manchester’s past as a centre of textile production forms the starting point of this seamless showcase of skills

How many hands did it take to make this show? That is to say, how many artisans, craftspeople, weavers and artists’ hands did these pieces pass through? For this is a textile exhibition that doesn’t just celebrate a short list of singular artists, but rather the many highly skilled craftspeople and communities repeating the stitches and specialities of their ancestors. Take Entangled Memories, Interwoven Stories by Péro for example: it was made by 50 artisans and took 18,000 hours to complete. And that’s one piece, in an exhibition that spans three galleries.

These many hands and hours make Entangled and Woven an exquisitely beautiful exhibition. Every slip of fabric is layered with delicate detail and texture. Fabrics are airy and ethereal one moment, and weighty and dipped in deep indigo the next. It is hot, the fabrics sway and flicker in the fans, and hands flicker quickly in the video works capturing the creation of the pieces. I am mesmerised.

What elevates this show from “it looks good” to “it’s great” is the fact it is also a true cultural exchange. The authentic type, where the artists have met in person, have visited each other’s countries, and have made brand new works in response to these research trips. The exhibition draws together eight artists and collectives from Korea and India, inviting them to incorporate new techniques into their own practices, creating something new that crosses borders, culture and time.

The Whitworth holds around 20,000 textiles from across the globe, and for this show it presents several historic Indian and Korean works, some dating back to the 18th century. They are carefully placed around the gallery, sometimes mirroring the new works and other times educating us on technique. It is hard for these pieces – primarily flat on the wall in frames – to command presence alongside the impactful contemporary installations, but they serve as a good historical reference point and a link to Manchester’s past as a centre of textile production.

In the middle of the first gallery is Gilded Veil_A Mysterious Curtain Lightly Draped in Gold by Jounghye Yoo. Suspended from a wooden frame in the ceiling is a tunnel of fabric sheets fading from indigo to red, bursting into glorious gold in the centre and back to red and finally indigo again. Inspired by the gate of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, the shape of the sheer sheets is palatial, and as I wander through them they adjust slightly in the air, cocooning me in a surreal world drenched in colour.

The work was made in collaboration with Dr Ismail Mohammad Khatri, a master of ajrakh block printing from Gujarat, and his son, Juned Ismail. Ajrakh motifs dance with Korean embroidery using gold thread, and Indian cotton sits with Korean silk creating a work that effortlessly blends varied skills and collapses the separation between heritage, culture and artists – even between my body and the gallery space as I disappear into this veiled passage.

Connection abounds between the artists themselves in the next gallery where Somi Ko, Young In Hong and fashion brand and cultural practice Péro play with weight, fragmentation, animals and teeny-tiny mirrors. Somi Ko’s People of One, Moment is a series of figures on Indian cotton made using traditional Indian mirror work. As I draw closer to the dancing bodies, I see shards of my own reflection split and shatter across the gallery, releasing me from my fleshy form.

At the other end of the gallery, Young In Hong integrates this mirror work into Sacred Empires, a series of ornate flags produced in collaboration with Kala Raksha, a grassroots artisan collective in Kutch, home to seven minority craft communities. In Indian folk belief, the small reflective mirrors are seen as ritualistic devices that ward off evil spirits and mediate divine presence.

The divine – or the spiritual realm – is also very present in the third gallery where Kaimurai, Sumakshi Singh and Yeonsoon Chang make the unseen seen. Singh crafts an ethereal, floating bridge to highlight links between Korea, India and the UK. She embroiders on water-soluble fabric so when the base is dissolved, all that is left is a delicate web of threads, glowing against the deep blue walls in the gallery.

Kaimurai makes visible the process of meditation through stepped khadi sheets that reach upwards toward the spiritual realm. A combination of sculpture and painting, Kaimurai’s work is arresting and intriguing. Beginning with a bell hung over a hefty granite sphere, his sheets of khadi rise up in stages, each with a graduating splash of indigo that gets smaller and smaller as if reality were receding.

Meanwhile, Chang ponders on the Buddhist concept of Worincheongang, which means “the moon reflected on a thousand rivers”. Her glowing structural pieces, dyed in indigo and shimmering as if possessing a divine power, enhance this sensation of togetherness both with the spiritual realm and the communities that dream under the self-same moon.

Back in the main gallery, a mythical creature by Boito is made through the mingling of skills from across the Indian state of Odisha. A papier-mache chest comes from Raghurajpur; ringa textile and beads from Malkangiri; cane craft from Talabasta – the list goes on. It is an unusual creature, with a chicken’s head, elephant’s leg, human’s arm and camel’s hump, each boasting a different fabric and way of making. It is also the perfect symbol of what has happened – joyously – in Entangled and Woven: cultures combining to make the most striking works of art.

• Hyundai Translocal Series: Entangled and Woven is at the Whitworth, Manchester until 3 January 2027