Eclectica Contemporary EXPO CHICAGO 2025

Eclectica Contemporary is thrilled to announce our participation in the 12th edition of EXPO CHICAGO, returning to the Navy Pier this April 24-27, 2025.

We are excited to present Thread Counts: Weaving Power, Pattern, and Provocation, featuring the works of two influential textile artists: Abdoulaye Konaté and Louis Barthélemy. This dynamic showcase explores the intersection of history, identity, and beauty through textile-based art, creating a dialogue transcending borders and time.

Bringing together over 170 of the world’s most prominent galleries, EXPO CHICAGO draws upon the city’s rich history as a vibrant international cultural destination, while highlighting the region’s contemporary arts community.

Thread Counts: Weaving Power, Pattern, and Provocation

Textiles have long been more than just material—they are narratives, symbols of status, acts of resistance, and records of cultural memory. In Thread Counts: Weaving Power, Pattern, and Provocation, artists Abdoulaye Konaté and Louis Barthélemy use fabric as a medium to interrogate history, reclaim identity, and challenge dominant structures of power.

Konaté’s vast textile compositions draw from the rich traditions of West African woven storytelling, transforming cloth into a site of political and spiritual reflection. His works navigate the complexities of colonial legacies, environmental crises, and cultural resilience, using intricate layers of hand-dyed fabric to evoke both tension and transcendence. Barthélemy, on the other hand, reinvents the legacy of European tapestry by embedding it with narratives of postcolonial reclamation. Merging influences from Renaissance friezes and North African visual traditions, his works subvert the historical role of textiles as tools of aristocratic display, instead transforming them into dynamic spaces of cultural dialogue and critique.

Together, Konaté and Barthélemy push the boundaries of textile as both form and concept, proving that fabric is never just decoration—it is an archive, a battleground, and a provocation. Through Thread Counts, they unravel the past while weaving visions of the future, reminding us that every stitch tells a story and every pattern holds power.