We asked visual artist Ann Hamilton how her study of Philadelphia’s history of textile production inspires her thinking around the relationship between production and consumption. “Now, increasingly, we all function as consumers, it’s a form of participation,” Hamilton says. “There’s a real difference between consuming an experience and having an experience, and so how can we make spaces where you have a sense of some collective, shared experience within your own individuality?”
Ann Hamilton: habitus was on view, with major support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, September 17, 2016–January 8, 2017. Watch Hamilton discuss the social connotations of cloth.>>
Ann Hamilton is internationally recognized for her large scale, multimedia installations, including the event of a thread, which was staged in 2012 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The recipient of a National Medal of Arts, MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, and United States Artists Fellowship, Hamilton was chosen to represent the US at the 1991 São Paulo Biennial and the 1999 Venice Biennale.
