EXHIBITION :: FAIG AHMED :: TEXTILES ::OF:: CONSCIOUSNESS
An initimate exhibition of Faig Ahmed’s elaborate, sculptural textiles at Art@Bainbridge, part of the Princeton University Art Museum. The show runs from March 28, 2026 through August 2, 2026.
Textiles of Consciousness is an invitation.
Textiles of Consciousness is an invitation to reexperience glitches.
In general, we might tend to associate glitches with digital cultures. But Faig’s work reminds us that weaving is an ancient anticipation of, and a vital precursor to, digital pixel design. Digital aesthetics, he shows us, already exists in the design maps of weavers, who think and feel through patterns dot by dot. If weaving, then, is already a pixelated form of arrangement, there’s space for disruption; there’s potential for glitches.
Textiles of Consciousness is an invitation to descend sensorially, as though to the level of your own pulse.
Reimagined this way, the woven glitches become not signs of malfunction, but rather, a translation of potential energy: conceptual, narrative, and textural. In textiles, an accumulation of discrete, indiscernible, knots blend, like pixels, to create a composition of elaborate patterns.
Textiles of Consciousness is an invitation to let an imaginary gravitational force move through you as through the works.
These works ask you for the kind of attention we more readily lend to a melodic rhythm, hoping to land in sync.
Textiles of Consciousness is an invitation to the sensory prehistory of the rug.
Faig understands the borders, patterns, and symbolisms in textiles as analogous to “social structure.” Allowing these to pulse, glitch, drip, bend, and fluff acts on us as though experiencing social shifts, connecting us to how embedded our sensory experience and modes of perceiving are to social patternings. The overall effect is one where more familiar dynamics of textile patterns – patterns that are visual forms of stories passed from one generation to another – pull our senses into them. As our senses become affected by the work, in effect we are in a practice of allowing stories in/of textiles to change our consciousness.
