Lining Revealed—A Journey Through Folk Wisdom and Contemporary Vision
Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile (CHAT)
Hong Kong

Because it is so intimately connected to the social fabric of daily life, craft has historically been viewed with a different lens from art. The notion persists that functional objects lack the originality of “fine art” due to their utilitarian nature. In Europe and the US, fiber art emerged in the 1960s largely as an extension of modernism. Western artists were drawn to the geometric motifs of traditional weaving primarily because they echoed the Bauhaus movement’s formal emphasis on pattern, line, and composition. However, in Asia, the ’60s were a critical period of postcolonial nation-building. Artists in Southeast and Central Asia embraced Indigenous craft traditions such as batik, weaving, and embroidery—practices that were regarded as “folk art”—as a way to reconstruct fractured cultural narratives and identities that were rooted in local histories and communal knowledge. “Lining Revealed” at the Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile (CHAT) in Hong Kong examined how artists today adopt age-old craft techniques to map the intricate threads connecting personal memory, cultural identity, and ecological consciousness in our fragmented present.