Weaving has a deep resonance for the artist, a primary, ancestral, repetitive technique that grants immense freedom. Theresa Lanceta, born in Barcelona and a long-time resident of Alicante, is showcased in a major retrospective now on view for the public through February 12, 2023. The exhibition at IVAM presents the largest survey of Lanceta’s work to date, highlighting a lifetime devoted to textile art and its expansive possibilities.
Exhibition Theresa Lanceta. Weaving as Open Source comprises 175 works that span tapestries, photographs, drawings, writings, videos, and sound recordings. The display includes pieces created within the last five years and invites collaborative projects with other creators from Alicante, such as Olga Diego, Pedro G. Romero, and Xabier Salaberria. Lanceta’s textile practice unfolds across multiple rooms in the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, reflecting a collaborative production between the Valencia center and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), which originally hosted the show with more than 200 works between spring and autumn.
As the director of IVAM explained, the project began to take shape decades ago. Lanceta learned to weave on an old loom purchased from a once-thriving Barcelona factory in the 1970s. Since then, she has immersed herself in a space of warp and weft described as an open source where personal expression and imaginative sparks can flourish. The exhibition’s curator and staff emphasize Lanceta’s pioneering stance, presenting weaving as a legitimate art form in its own right.
“Knitting is an open binary code, a dialogue between ones and zeros similar to computer language,” Lanceta has noted. She frames this art as a collaborative heritage, passed from one maker to another and then shared with others. Her position is clear: art grows through collective effort, and her own work embodies the contributions of many generations and makers. The emphasis remains that textile forms can carry contemporary significance through their social histories and shared techniques.
Unlike artists who move weaving into broader contemporary contexts, Lanceta tests the idea that fabrics themselves are artworks. The methods and the person behind them—the subjectivity—carry distinct poetics that speak to diverse worldviews. Her practice explores how material and memory intertwine, making the fabric a living record rather than a static object.
During the 1980s, Lanceta’s journeys among the Berber communities of the Middle Atlas revealed an anonymous knowledge transmitted through generations—mothers to daughters—permeating daily life and craft. This realization deepened the sense that techniques carry universal meanings beyond borders.
Exhibition layout
The first room features two large murals composed of dozens of fabrics, created between the late 1970s and 2022. The second room focuses on tapestries inspired by the Middle Atlas, while later sections explore projects tied to the Spanish carpet tradition of the fifteenth century, reflecting a production crafted by Muslim artisans for historical cycles of war and conquest.
In another segment, visitors encounter a piece titled Ebro War, bridging multiple eras. It traces Lanceta’s childhood in l’Horta de Sant Joan and her frequent journeys between Alicante and Barcelona from 2013 to 2020. This work integrates objects from the museum, including repurposed everyday items found in trenches, such as a military helmet transformed into a wine funnel and a soldier’s uniform repurposed as an apron.
The final hall centers on Raval, where Lanceta recounts her experiences with the Gypsy community and her formative years. This space marks the moment when her impulse to explore what is broken, damaged, and repaired began to take shape and meaning.
Theresa Lanceta
Lanceta studied History at the Complutense University of Madrid and completed a PhD in Art History. She divides her time between Barcelona, Alicante, Granada, Madrid, Seville, and Marrakech. She has taught at the Alicante School of Architecture and at Escola Massana in Barcelona, and in the early 1970s she embraced textiles as a form of artistic expression, challenging the traditional boundaries between art and craft.
Her career includes teaching positions at Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentària in Barcelona (1989), the Contemporary Art Museum in Elche (1995), and the Reina Sofía Art Center in Madrid (2000). She has also shown work at Ville des Arts in Casablanca (2000), Burning House in Madrid (2016), Azkuna Zentroa Alhóndiga in Bilbao, and Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona (2017-2018). Lanceta participated in major biennials in Cairo (2009), São Paulo (2013, 2014), and Venice (2017). Among her collaborations, she contributed to Las Cigarreras Center’s closure project in 2011 and curated the Olga Diego exhibition in 2014. Her works are held in major collections including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Banco Mediterráneo de Ahorros; José Cuervo Foundation, Mexico; Perez Art Museum, Miami; and MACBA, Barcelona.