Sheila Hicks’ thrilling textiles are the antidote to our modern world
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- Sign up to our newsletter Newsletter

Ask a dozen different visitors at artist Sheila Hicks’ current Tel Aviv exhibition what they see in her monumental installation Saffron Sentinel (2017) and you can expect to receive nearly twice as many answers in return. One might see a river of marshmallows breaking its banks or the flow of magma in the voluminous mounds of pure pigmented fibre, stacked thick and flocculent. Others (children, namely) view the brilliantly hued artwork as an enticing invitation to take a running plunge into the spongey stacks.
Curated by Karmit Galili and now open at Swedish institution Magasin III’s permanent satellite space in Jaffa, the show features three recent installations by Hicks. ‘It’s an exhibition to stimulate enquiry of what you know, and also of what you don’t know,’ explains the Nebraska-born artist. Take the colossal work that dominates much of the space, made from an ambiguous material. ‘This [Saffron Sentinel] is manmade, taking the pigment from the earth, transforming it with acrylic,’ reveals Hicks, ‘and then sending it to spinners, who can make it into a line, into a thread.’
Comets (detail), 2016-2018, by Sheila Hicks, yarn and textile fragments, installation view at Magasin III Jaffa.
Opposite, a bas-relief of multiple circular disks – or a ‘memory bundles’, as Hicks calls them – are mounted onto the wall in a vibrant constellation of hand-wrapped tinted yarns and textile fragments. The third work, Menhir (2016), comprises a column made of kilometres of linen strands cascading from the gallery’s high ceiling. Hicks chose the exhibition title ‘Migdalor’ (the Hebrew translation for ‘lighthouse’) as a symbolic nod to forms that can be pathfinders, and it seems, that Israel has long been a beacon for the artist.
Hicks made her first trip to Israel ‘early last century’, she quips, and has visited 20-odd times since. ‘Keep awake and watch, because it’s all happening and it’s happening very fast,’ the 84-year-old artist says of the country. ‘People are living at a very fast pace here – they’re not ambling along. They’re on high energy, high productivity, high speculation – everyone is grabbing and getting what they can get.’
Still, Hicks sees threads of similarity with the area of Paris where she lives. ‘It’s very much like the neighbourhood here [in Jaffa]. You came out of the metro in the morning, you’re going to see every colour, every shape, hear every language. You’re going to hear people asking for directions, trying to find their way. But how do you express that in a white box? And how do you express that to people who are coming to see something and not just be bombarded with a television that’s telling you what to think?’ she challenges.
Installation view of ‘Migdalor’ at Magasin III Jaffa.
Modern-day exhibitions, notes Hicks, are largely supplemented by videos. ‘You go see ten shows in ten different galleries, and listen to ten videos talking to you,’ she says. ‘When you wake up in the morning, you’re going to take a thread of that experience and amalgamate it. It’s all woven together – a quilt inside your head of that experience the day before.’ In the age of information overload, we rely increasingly less on intuition.
The Jaffa show sits in stark contrast, a paean to emotional instinct filtered through personal experience. ‘I’m going to give you an impact – that’s my intention – and you’re going to have a very hard time interpreting what this show is about, because I’m narrowing it in,’ she explains. ‘I’m concentrating it, I’m focusing it, I’m making it strongly and uniformly simple.’ In Hicks’ deft hands, simplicity is anything but reductive.
Menhir, 2016, by Sheila Hicks, linen strands.
Comets, 2016-2018, by Sheila Hicks, yarn and textile fragments.
Comets (detail), 2016-2018, by Sheila Hicks, yarn and textile fragments.
Saffron Sentinel (detail), 2017, by Sheila Hicks, pigmented fibre.
INFORMATION
‘Migdalor’ is on view until 15 February 2019. For more information, visit the Magasin III website (opens in new tab)
ADDRESS
Magasin III Jaffa
34 Olei Zion
6813131 Tel Aviv-Yafo
VIEW GOOGLE MAPS (opens in new tab)
-
Kunokaiku urns become everyday domestic objects to address the subjectivity of loss
Kunokaiku urns were created by photographer Marianna Jamadi with Mexican ceramic studio Menat, as a way to remember a loved one at home
By Sheila Lam • Published
-
Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and Book3 expand its ecosystem with speed and sophistication
Samsung’s new Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy Book3 Ultra are designed to deliver a premium computing experience
By Jonathan Bell • Published
-
Design, air filtration and sustainability meet in the ‘Air’ lamp
‘Air as design inspiration’: the ‘Air’ lamp by Adam D Tihany and Contardi puts ecological issues at the forefront
By Hannah Silver • Published
-
Louis Barthélemy’s tapestries capture the sublimity and dynamism of Senegalese wrestling
‘Mbër Yi / The Wrestlers’ at the Théodore Monod African Art Museum (IFAN) in Dakar sees French artist Louis Barthélemy respond to Senegalese mysticism in appliquéd hangings
By Emeline Nsingi Nkosi • Published
-
Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen saturate Berlin gallery in sound, vision and visceral sensation
At Esther Schipper gallery Berlin, artists Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen draw on the elemental forces of sound and light in a meditative and disorienting joint exhibition
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
London art exhibitions: a guide for early 2023
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, and those around the UK, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
By Harriet Lloyd Smith • Published
-
Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ wins Best Art Installation in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
Brain Forest Quipu, Cecilia Vicuña's Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, has been crowned 'Best Art Installation' in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Michael Heizer’s Nevada ‘City’: the land art masterpiece that took 50 years to conceive
Michael Heizer’s City in the Nevada Desert (1972-2022) has been awarded ‘Best eighth wonder’ in the 2023 Wallpaper* design awards. We explore how this staggering example of land art came to be
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Cyprien Gaillard on chaos, reorder and excavating a Paris in flux
We interviewed French artist Cyprien Gaillard ahead of his major two-part show, ‘Humpty \ Dumpty’ at Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations (until 8 January 2023). Through abandoned clocks, love locks and asbestos, he dissects the human obsession with structural restoration
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Year in review: top 10 art interviews of 2022, chosen by Wallpaper* arts editor Harriet Lloyd-Smith
Top 10 art interviews of 2022, as selected by Wallpaper* arts editor Harriet Lloyd-Smith, summing up another dramatic year in the art world
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Cerith Wyn Evans: ‘I love nothing more than neon in direct sunlight. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful’
Cerith Wyn Evans reflects on his largest show in the UK to date, at Mostyn, Wales – a multisensory, neon-charged fantasia of mind, body and language
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published