We start the new year with a look back over 12 remarkable months. This overview showcases more than one hundred projects that were developed in the TextielLab in 2024 and found their way to exhibitions, museums and buildings around the world: from the Venice Biennale and MoMA in New York to the National Visual Arts Gallery in Kuala Lumpur and the new customs building at Schiphol airport. We are grateful for all these collaborations and extremely happy with the results.

We also exhibited more work than ever before in our own museum. This is partly due to the long-term R&D programmes in the TextielLab, in which we invite artists to push the boundaries of techniques and materials with us. For example, the exhibition ‘Is it alive?’ displayed the initial results of weaving with metal. This groundbreaking R&D programme will soon be continued with an open call for the development of new applications of the technique. The current exhibition, ‘SHAPE – body, fashion, identity’, presents the stunning 3D knits that came out of the fully fashioned knitting programme. Meanwhile, ‘Secrets of making #4’ features no less than nine different projects from the TextielLab, showcasing not only the finished products but also the creative process that led up to them.

In another exciting development, many new artists and designers engaged with our institution, and even more experts and interested parties joined our network. We consciously focused on strengthening this community through network events, symposia, artist talks and live streams. That’s because all these people play a crucial role in realising our ambition to keep learning and sharing our knowledge with the world.

An example of this is the use of sustainable materials, which gained significant momentum over the past year. There are more and more options to work with locally sourced materials, such as recycled PET yarns, wool from Dutch sheep and circular fibres from Wolkat in Tilburg.

We also increased our support for emerging talent by launching the Young Talent Platform. This is a series of presentations on the viewing gallery where we display work by a changing roster of talented young artists and designers who have worked with us. These include minor students from 14 academies, ten international participants of the Advanced Textile Program, 15 interns and 12 graduating students. Many of them are also featured in this annual review.

Finally, looking ahead, I am delighted that we have once again been awarded a subsidy by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. This four-year government scheme, known as the BIS, grants subsidies to select cultural institutions. For us, the scheme not only validates our status as a centre of excellence for textile development, but it also makes funds available for continued experimentation and innovation. I hope you are as inspired as we are by the projects presented on the following pages, and I invite you to join us on this adventure to make the sector more appealing, sustainable and inclusive.

Hebe Verstappen

Head of the TextielLab

Tilburg, January 2024

Photo by Josefina Eikenaar/FINA fotografie
Homepage video by Jefta