A groundbreaking exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum is transforming how visitors view one of humanity's oldest crafts. "RugLife," now on display through December 28, elevates everyday floor coverings into powerful messengers of history, conflict, and contemporary social issues. These familiar household objects, typically walked on and covered by furniture, serve as platforms for exploring stories that extend far beyond domestic spaces.
The exhibition features works by international artists who use traditional rug-making techniques to address modern concerns. From a distance, Sonya Clark's "Comb Carpet" (2008) appears as soft waves of billowing black cushions celebrating Black barbershops and salons. Upon closer inspection, viewers discover the material consists of thousands of plastic combs with sharp teeth angled upward. Andrea Zittel's "Carpet Furniture: Drop Leaf Table" (1993) challenges expectations by creating a flat rug that juts upward at a 90-degree angle, while Nevin Aladağ's "Pattern Matching, Purple-Blue" (2016) weaves a traditional Turkish rug to resemble a basketball court.
Curators Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, a University of Minnesota alumna, originally compiled this touring exhibition for San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Design, where it opened in 2023. "The way we work is we see as much art as we possibly can," Fox explained. "When we see that there are constellations of concerns or ways of working, then we think, might this become an exhibition?" The curators noticed artisans worldwide focusing on rug-making to explore issues surrounding contemporary conditions like climate change and political tensions.
Several pieces in the exhibition directly address global conflicts and social issues. Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei's "Tyger" (2022) uses Tibetan-style weaving to depict a tiger lying belly-up in a vulnerable position. Created as part of a World Wildlife Fund campaign for tiger conservation, Fox notes that if conservation efforts succeed, Ai's next rug might show the tiger in an offensive stance. Ukrainian artist Oksana Levchenkya's "Pac-Man and Cossacks" (2022) fuses vintage gaming imagery with Eastern Slavic history, weaving the iconic video game character alongside folkloric patterns of Cossack soldiers, connecting Ukraine's ongoing war to centuries-long struggles for independence.
Lebanese-born artist Ali Chaaban contributes multiple works exploring cultural identity and modern displacement. His "Grandpa's Monobloc" (2023) ceremoniously wraps a plastic lawn chair with a Persian rug, while "I Fought the Internet and the Internet Won II" (editions 2-3 of 3, 2019) features a traditional carpet with a silkscreened superhero charging through it. According to Fox, Chaaban is "really interested in the kind of push-pull of being an Arab living in a Western culture, where the pull of the past and the force of the present are in constant friction."
Some of the most challenging pieces in "RugLife" confront violence and surveillance through beautiful craftsmanship. Johannah Herr's "War Rug II (El Paso Shooting)" and "War Rug IV (Las Vegas Shooting)" (2020) use vibrant, almost childlike colors to create fanciful shapes depicting mass shootings in El Paso and Las Vegas. "All of these cheerful, lovely, fanciful shapes have very sober references," Fox observed. Similarly, Noelle Mason's "Ground Control (Mexicali/Calexico)" (2020) translates infrared heat imagery from U.S.-Mexico border surveillance into tapestries, creating an unsettling tension between aesthetic beauty and human suffering.
The exhibition creates a uniquely tactile experience even without allowing visitors to touch the artworks. Viewers find themselves longing for physical connection with the woven surfaces, which serves as a reminder of the show's preoccupation with comfort and its limitations. The rugs naturally draw people in with their familiar domestic associations, but their challenging subject matter keeps audiences alert and engaged with difficult contemporary issues.
"We're interested in how design reflects what's going on in society," Fox explained, highlighting the exhibition's central thesis. The artworks demonstrate how even the most familiar household objects can force viewers to reckon with histories of struggle and survival. Some pieces deliberately subvert the coziness typically associated with rugs to explore themes of violence, control, and cultural displacement.
Azra Aksamija's "Palimpsest of 89" (2007) exemplifies this approach through a single-channel animation showing a rug being woven, highlighting how these textiles can reframe historical narratives. The work demonstrates the medium's capacity to serve as both historical document and contemporary commentary, weaving together past and present in ways that challenge conventional understanding.
"RugLife" continues at the Weisman Art Museum, located at 333 East River Road in Minneapolis, with free admission open to the public. The exhibition runs through December 28, offering visitors multiple opportunities to engage with these thought-provoking works that transform everyday objects into powerful vehicles for social and political commentary. More information about visiting hours and related programming is available through the museum's website.
