Phantom Lines

This exhibition reflects on the afterlives of silk as commodity, object, material, and industry, and its historical entanglement with China.

In this group exhibition, four recent artists from Yale's School of Art working across sculpture, performance, design, and installation reflect on the afterlives of silk as commodity, object, material, and industry, and its historical entanglement with China.

The exhibition considers silk as both a material and a system shaped through processes of making, circulation, and exchange—from its roots in sericulture, to its movement along the Silk Road, it's history in New Haven and its dissemination through contemporary global trade, as well as its emblematic associations with Chinese culture. Moving away from silk as a fixed object of luxury or tradition, the works offer a meditation on silk as a metaphor, following its shifting presence across bodies, images, and global contexts.

Working largely through material substitution and transformation, the artists reflect on how the visual, cultural, and bodily associations of silk continue to persist and evolve. Phantom Lines traces how silk’s histories remain present within the ways it is perceived, imagined, and encountered today.

Created with the support of Yale-China Arts Lab.