Ann Hamilton

The textile arts have always informed artist Ann Hamilton's vision. Growing up, she immersed herself in sewing, needlework, and embroidery before officially studying textile design in university. Although she would later earn a graduate degree in sculpture, Hamilton continues to incorporate textile design into her ambitious, all-encompassing installations, often blending sculptural elements with photography, video and performance, and even sound.

Hamilton's vast interests include history and the written word. She equates the handling of thread in her sewing to the production of words in sentences. In her 1994 project Lineament, the artist cut out individual lines from pages in a book and rolled them into three-dimensional balls of text. Hamilton treated the paper as though it were thread, manipulating it to embody the broader binary of creation and destruction.