Anne Xavier Heide work bio + cv

overshot, interlocking ~ Blackhawk College Artspace Gallery, Moline, IL, September 29-October 31 2025

overshot, interlocking partial installation view.

From left to right:
slant arm ascends, 2023. Cotton yarn, Tencel yarn, plastic yarn, grommets, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord, assorted hardware. 70"x35"x12"
two bar ascends, 2024. Cotton and plastic yarn, grommets, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord. 72"x64"x24"
spiral arm ascends, 2024. Cotton yarn, Tencel yarn, plastic yarn, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord. 74"x40"x11"
straight arm ascends, 2024. Cotton yarn, Tencel yarn, wool yarn, plastic yarn, grommets, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord, lead, assorted hardware. 68"x34"x17"

Not pictured: four arm wavers, 2024. Cotton yarn, Tencel yarn, plastic yarn, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord, assorted hardware. 72"x35"x21"

Statement

This series of weavings exposes the generally hidden forms of retail clothing racks, with the racks becoming the central motif rather than being hidden under rows of clothing for sale. Before fast fashion, people had deep care and use relationships with each of their garments. My great-grandparents and grandparents all made many well-crafted home goods, including clothing, quilts and furniture, but these practices were not carried on by their children (my parents, aunts and uncles). Now, clothing is considered disposable. With the rise of inexpensive readymade clothes produced by industrial textile equipment and underpaid mostly overseas labor came the rapid decline in common knowledge of textile construction techniques.

In these human-scale banners, I reconfigure various traditional weaving patterns including overshot, twills and waffle weave. Many of these patterns were used by early white settlers who colonized what is now the United States. They wove for subsistence before readymade cloth was available. Variations have also been used by weavers all over the world since shortly after the evolution of humans, when weaving evolved too. The sculptural stands holding my weavings reference warp-weighted and vertical looms, which have been used since prehistoric times.

With the invention of the Jacquard loom in the early 19th century, weavers were suddenly able to incorporate complex organic shapes and combine patterns within their weavings in the course of a day or two in a way that was previously only possible with thousands of hours of work. At the same time, other industrial textile equipment to produce all different types of fabric proliferated, and the cottage textile industry in the early United States swiftly disappeared as factories took over cloth production. This disappearance followed the cultural erasure and land theft that the same white settlers acted out when they arrived in America and displaced and killed Indigenous people already living here. In much the same way, the contemporary clothing industry continues to displace particularly the most marginalized people by polluting water, creating unsafe and unsustainable working conditions, and dumping unimaginable quantities of discarded clothing in landfills.

I made these weavings using a very different type of Jacquard loom than the one invented in 1804, which is also the kind that is still commonly used in industry today. The works in this exhibition were produced using a TC2, or thread controller 2, Jacquard loom, invented by Vibeke Vestby in the late 1990s. Vestby’s objective was to return the power of increased thread control to handweavers: the TC2 is operated using a combination of digital image files (often created by hacking Photoshop) that the loom’s computer reads, a vacuum pump fed in above the loom that individually raises specific threads to create the design, and the physical movement of yarn through the path created by the loom’s raised threads that the artist operating the loom feeds in to make the cloth. Although Jacquard weaving was invented to eliminate the need for cooperative, small-scale production, weaving on the TC2 loom as I do to make these works recenters the Jacquard weaving process in the tradition of weaving as collaboration: maintaining the loom requires a team of people working together, generally made up of artists and students who are also making weavings on the loom.

The collaborative nature of the TC2 inherently invites the sharing of knowledge and cooperative teaching. Although this exhibition cannot change the linear trajectory of clothing from factory to store to consumer to landfill, and the cultural and environmental costs that comes with this cycle, I do hope that it will inspire curiosity and criticality about how, where, why and for whom cloth is made.

bigger and bigger ~ Hexad: Augustana Faculty Triennial, Center for Visual Culture Centennial Hall Gallery, Rock Island, IL, September 15-December 8 2025

bigger and bigger, 2025. Hand-dyed cotton fabric, cotton yarn, sewing thread, repurposed thrums, wool yarn cut out from sweater project, rayon embroidery floss, mercerized cotton embroidery floss, handpainted warp and weft, hand-dyed wool yarn, graphite, colored pencil, trans tape, micron pen, ballpoint pen, linen yarn, hand-dyed cotton polyester blend twine, cotton polyester blend yarn, seams, buttons, and zippers from discarded secondhand clothing, jacquard sample with abc threaded warp, galvanized steel pipe, spray paint, select pine board by way of lawrence kansas by way of new zealand, paste wax, clevis pins, oak dowel pins, poplar dowel rod, galvanized bolts. 70”x78”x28”

softline ~ Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery, Lawrence KS, February 26-March 8 2024

softline partial installation view.

From left to right:
four arm wavers, 2024. Cotton yarn, plastic yarn, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord, assorted hardware. 72”x35”x21”
clothes rack coverlet, 2024. Cotton yarn, acrylic yarn, rayon yarn, wood, shellac, paste wax, assorted hardware. 71”x62”x35”
spiral arm ascends, 2024. Cotton yarn, plastic yarn, wood, shellac, paste wax, paracord. 74”x40”x11”

softline partial installation view.

Statement

When I walk into a clothing store, there’s bright lighting and peppy music playing, and aisles of brightly colored clothing organized by size, style, and type. On one side, the clothes are many colors and shapes: sometimes form-fitting, other times flowy. There are shiny and fluffy textures and frilly details. On the other, the clothes are more angular, and made up of muted colors. The fabrics are sturdier and there’s less variation in styles. I’m left in between, unsure if I will be able to find clothes that fit and feel right to me whichever direction I choose.

I have always had deep relationships with the clothes I wear, but these relationships are not always positive. For much of my life, I could not choose clothing that I really wanted to wear while maintaining relationships crucial to my wellbeing, due to the deeply gendered nature of clothing and my desire to explore styles outside of the gender assigned to me. Now, even when I find clothing that I like the style of, it often does not fit me, since my body is not the shape of body it was constructed for. Making my own clothes brings unwanted attention to aspects of my body that I did not choose and that do not feel like me. Clothing myself always ends in some sort of compromise.

Beneath all the clothing displayed in stores, the reflective, bony, machined forms of retail clothes racks hold it all up. As shoppers forever chase the next style, hoping it will provide them with a boost in status, comfort, happiness, and ease, the clothes racks voicelessly maintain the flow of consumption, all the while absorbing the colors and textures of the clothes around them so they fade into the background themselves.

I can use clothes to change the way I am perceived, but I am not always successful. But by exercising agency over what I wear, I can sometimes disrupt others’ perceptions of me. In much the same way, in my work I transform unwanted clothes into garments for retail clothes racks, reorienting the linear trajectory of clothing from factory to store to consumer to landfill. I salvage donated secondhand clothes that are unlikely to find a new wearer, whether because they are worn out, defective, or are simply an unpopular style. In clothing these sculptures, I experiment with clothing a form removed from human gender norms. I situate these clothed racks in installations that mimic fast fashion stores, but center the forms of the racks rather than concealing them.

Although each new day brings another opportunity to choose what I wear, the articles of clothing I own are not infinitely changeable: I only have a limited number. Being aware of the hours of labor and often non-renewable resources each garment requires to reach my closet, I do my best to take good care of my clothing and keep it for a long time. However, this is not the case for most people: On average, an article of clothing is only worn seven times in the United States before it is discarded (Maarit Saloleinen). This rapid turnover of clothing is perpetuated by stores that urge people to consume as much as possible.

Retail clothing stores that are ubiquitous today have not existed forever: Until the mid-20th century, most people in the United States could more affordably make clothing at home. Before new clothes were available for easy and inexpensive purchase, clothing was one of the most valuable assets that an American household owned: it was passed down through generations, and worn until it was unwearable. This is because the labor that was required to handspin, handweave and hand-sew garments (labor that was and still is mostly carried out by women, enslaved people, and low-wage workers) was so time intensive that each garment was precious. Even once it became unwearable, any still usable fabric was repurposed into quilts, rag rugs, and handmade paper. The invention of industrial textile devices in the late 19th and early 20th century such as the spinning jenny, the cotton gin, powerlooms, and the sewing machine vastly expedited the production of cloth and clothing. The first factory was a yarn spinning factory, which started the Industrial Revolution, forever changing the way all goods are produced (Sofi Thanhauser).

Before fast fashion, people had deep care and use relationships with each article of clothing they owned. They knew these garments and the labor that went into them well. Now, clothing is considered disposable and with the rise of mechanized textile production came the rapid decline in common knowledge of textile construction techniques. Beyond textile construction, there are also many layers of transit and presentation that bring an article of clothing to its eventual owner. The people and objects who carry out this labor remain anonymous to consumers today. By centering the form of the clothes rack in my work, I hope to help viewers direct their attention towards usually unseen parts of clothing production.

Textiles that are considered valuable antiques or still created as common hobbies such as quilts, coverlets, and rag rugs are still appreciated for their craftsmanship. In my work, I use these recognizable historical methods of transforming worn-out clothes alongside digital weaving and garment construction techniques. I fragment and reassemble articles of clothing, combining garments that would not typically be worn together. When clothing the racks, I consider the connotations and experiences garments I repurpose already hold, but am not obligated to them. Rather, I develop diverse ways for clothes to be worn. This renewal of discarded garments provides an alternative to where they would otherwise end up: in a landfill or the ocean, no longer useful but not going away either.

References

Falls, Susan, and Smith, Jessica R., author. Overshot: The Political Aesthetics of Woven Textiles from the Antebellum South and Beyond. 2020.

Salolainen, Maarit. Interwoven: Exploring Materials and Structures. Espoo, Finland, Aalto University Press, 2022.

Thanhauser, Sofi. Worn: A People’s History of Clothing. Pantheon, 2022.

Thanks

This exhibition would not have been possible without the support of my thesis committee. Thank you Shawn Bitters, Poppy DeltaDawn, Rashawn Griffin, Steve Gurysh, and Mary Anne Jordan. Thank you Erick Morales-Scholz, Hadley Clark, HoYin Cho, and Cotter Mitchell for your technical support. Thank you to my textiles MFA cohort Becky Johnson, Karen Ondracek, and Sean Turner for your flexibility and support during the past few months. Thank you Sammie Jane Hardewig and Lisa Hamilton for your installation assistance.

© Anne Xavier Heide

@annexavierheide