UNTAMED WEAVES: THE TEXTILE IMAGINARY OF “L’ÉTOFFE DES RÊVES” AT HALLE SAINT PIERRE

Halle Saint Pierre in Paris is presenting, through 31 July 2026, the exhibition “L’Étoffe des rêves”, a curatorial project that transforms the entire venue into a vast textile landscape animated by 300 works by 36 artists. A wind of Art Brut and Surrealism blows through the exhibition, turning textiles into a privileged territory of experimentation, semantic slippage and radical imagination. “L’Étoffe des rêves” offers a fresh reading of textile art through artistic practices rooted in Art Brut, outsider art and Surrealism. Far from being a merely decorative field, textiles are presented as a critical, poetic and conceptual medium, capable of creating tension between matter, memory and the body. The works, often produced using modest, reclaimed or recycled materials, generate an extremely diverse formal and symbolic vocabulary: threads, weaves, interlacings, seams and knots become signs, words and fragments of narrative. Textiles thus emancipate themselves from their traditional domestic sphere to become instruments of emancipation, dissent and social imagination.

The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Halle Saint Pierre and the Centre International du Surréalisme et de la Citoyenneté Mondiale in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. After the Paris chapter, “L’Étoffe des rêves” will be presented, from 13 July 2026, at Maison André Breton, curated by Clément Gaësler, who oversees the project at this second venue. The exhibition forms part of a broader reflection on responsible curatorial practice, attentive both to the circulation of works and to the material impact of artistic production.

The choice of textiles – a medium relatively little used by Art Brut and surrealist artists – makes it possible to revisit the relationship between medium, gesture and creative process, when the work becomes a site of exploration, experimentation and continuous rewriting. Historically associated with the applied arts, decorative arts or domestic practices, textiles have become a privileged terrain for artistic reappropriation and for cultural and communitarian embodiment. The exhibition highlights how this medium contributes to redefining gender attributions linked to manual labour and the domestic sphere, the boundaries between art and craft, between unique work and handmade object, as well as the status of textile artefacts in relation to ornament, text and architecture, to the point of becoming a favoured support for poetic escape. In “L’Étoffe des rêves”, textile works often become sites of subtle critique and resistance: thread behaves like a sensitive language, capable of carrying intimate stories, family memories, traumas, personal mythologies as well as collective and political narratives. The weave is not merely a surface, but a narrative structure and a mental space. The thirty-six artists featured in the exhibition explore the shifting frontiers of textiles, bringing together traditional know-how and contemporary visual experimentation.

Ancestral techniques – weaving, embroidery, tapestry, lace-making, macramé, knitting, sewing – are approached in innovative ways when pushed to unprecedented scales or unconventional supports, in singular ways when they engage with visionary, obsessive or autobiographical worlds, and subversively when they challenge the aesthetic and cultural codes that have historically defined them. Materials – whether natural, synthetic, raw or recycled – are treated as matrices of meaning: textiles become surface when they unfold as canvas, picture or tapestry; volume when they take on sculptural or installation form; landscape when they envelop the exhibition space and create immersive environments; body when they evoke clothing, skin, wounds or metamorphosis. From suspended installations to painted fabrics, from sculptural cloths to wall hangings, from minimal gestures to baroque richness of detail, each work probes the relationship between matter, time and memory, asserting textiles as a medium of resistance, emotion and transmission.

The exhibition brings together works by Barbara d’Antuono, Rita Arimont, Alireza Asbahi Sisi, Elodie Barthélémy, Nicole Bayle, Stéphane Blanquet, Hervé Bohnert, Shao Liyu Chen, Marie-Thérèse Chevalier, Lou Dubois, Reinaldo Eckenberger, Anaïs Eychenne, Max Goldinger, Therese Hächler, Nicolas Henry, Juliette Imbert, Micheline Jacques, Aurélia Jaubert, Alicia Lasne, Marie-Rose Lortet, Marion Oster, Gilbert Peyre, Philippe Pons, Raymond Reynaud, Josette Rispal, Fabian Sanchez, Christine Sefolosha, Lili Simon, Ficht Tanner, Pascal Tassini, Jacques Trovic, Jorge Varela, Alexandre Vigneron, Polly Vogel, Jean-Noël Wintergerst and Brankica Žilovič. The exhibition at Halle Saint Pierre is curated by Martine Lusardy, director of the institution.

Following its Paris presentation, “L’Étoffe des rêves” will be on view from 13 July 2026 at Maison André Breton // Centre International du Surréalisme et de la Citoyenneté Mondiale in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, curated by Clément Gaësler, continuing its trajectory in a location emblematic of surrealist history and opening up new perspectives on the relationship between textiles, imagination and poetic subversion. “L’Étoffe des rêves” can be visited at Halle Saint Pierre, 2 rue Ronsard, 75018 Paris. The museum is open Monday to Friday from 11 am to 6 pm, Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm and Sunday from 12 pm to 6 pm, and is closed on 1 May, 14 July, 25 December and 1 January.