Marriage tunic c. 20th century

This marriage tunic was made anonymously and now lives at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. You can just imagine someone slowly, carefully, building up the layers of fabric and decoration. It’s a textile that feels like a painting. There’s such freedom in the pattern-making. I can see the artist thinking, what if I put this color next to that color? There’s an intuitive approach to this. It feels as if it came into being through shifts and adjustments, rather than through pre-planned design. I sympathize with the maker. I wonder if she was creating to her own rhythm, to her own beat, drawing on a tradition of design, and yet also improvising. And I think that is what many artists do, they embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, and they keep having a conversation with one another across time, inspiring each other.