*teks-

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, an ancient mother tongue that spawned a wide swath of languages from Gaelic to Greek to Hindi, contained a root word \*teks-, meaning “to weave” or ”to fabricate”. The Latin verb texere is the etymological root of “textile, and “text”. In Greek, “Tekhne” Means “art,” “craft,” “skill, and in English it becomes a root of words like “architect” and “technology”, suggesting the deep cultural relationship between the creation of fabrics, applied sciences, and the evolution of ideas. Roland Barthes, in his work _Mythologies_ correlated the development of textiles and the creation of myths. He argued that while a woven fabric has a literal foundation as an object, it is also imbued with an additional layer of meaning that ties the material to an abstract concept. In Greek mythology, the three Fates create human life by spinning, allotting, and cutting a thread—connecting artistic creation to god-like powers. This show brings together works that refer to mythological frameworks as emerging from their material correlaries.