Fair designer,Mzwakhe Ndlovu, gives Elephant a tour of his highlights from The Armory Show, NYC.
Mzwakhe Ndlovu is a multidisciplinary designer, with a background in architectural and spatial design, primarily focused on the relationships between people, places and objects. He has practiced architecture in cities across the globe, working in Johannesburg, Tokyo, San Francisco and Detroit to name a few.
The focus of the 2025 Armory Show was the American South, and one cannot speak about the American South without speaking about its gruesome history of enslavement towards the harvesting and production of cotton. As this year’s fair designer, I had the opportunity of perusing the fair with very few people present, and in those moments is when I noticed that, by coincidence or design, it is somewhat apt that this year’s thematic direction coincided with the many galleries featuring several textile works.
The most prominent of these being this year’s Platform section, which was curated by Raina Lampkins-Fielder of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, titled My Art is The Evidence of Freedom, showing a myriad of incredible works from great southern artists, such as Thornton Dial and the OG quilters of Gee’s Bend.
Various quilts from the quilt makers of Gee’s Bend
Galleries showing notable textile works include were Hannah Traore’s presentation of an all-new body of work by James Perkins, who has developed a unique technique of burying fabrics such as silk for months, even years, in the beach by his home, to engage in what he defines as a collaboration between him and nature. A distinct mark making process executed by his collaborators (the wind, rain, sun, salt, soil, and even wildlife) leave incredible striations that affect the textiles in different ways, resulting in these strikingly complex yet beautifully minimal pieces.
James Perkins, Never Let Your Memories Be Bigger Than Your Dreams, 2025
Going further south into the Americas, Richard Saltoun gallery presented works from a Colombian OG, Olga De Amaral, whose usually shimmering gold leaf-coated textiles are left ungilded this time around, and shown alongside a contemporary of Olga’s, Polish scultpor and fibre artist, Magdalena Abakonowicz’s work—putting the two titans in a subtle dialogue with one another.
Olga de Amaral — Naturaleza Silvestre, 1982-83
Sagarika Sundaram’s Sight Unseen textile piece, shown by Nature Morte is another bold textile work. Multiple layers of brightly-coloured hand-dyed felt stands in front of pure white slivers of felt, creating dramatic contrasts between the two, indicative of Sundaram’s exploration of unknown and unexpected worlds within her work. Another notable bold, colourful, architectural textile work—shown by Sargent’s Daughters—was Sarah Zapta’s Part of the tension from earthen pits) II. A plinth-like sculpture that is both surface and object in and of itself. So many layers to explore.
Sagarika Sundaram — Sight Unseen, 2024
Southern Guild came in heavy, too, with Amine El Gotaibi’s The Mountain Rock. A really large piece showing a really large swath of soft, off-white strings leap out of iron sheets onto the viewer. The contrast of the rusted steel and the pristinely clean natural fibres, the softness of the fibres and the harshness of the metal—combinations of note.
I could really go on and on, but to finish, we’ve got Ricardo Rendón co-shown by ARRÓNIZ ARTE CONTEMPORANEO/ NUEVEOCHENTA. One thing about this guy is how clever he is. Rendón’s solo presentation titled Momentos de Ejecucion (Moments of Execution) cleverly shows a series of wall-hung felt sheets, with perfectly perforated circles, precisely draped over the punched-out felt circles themselves that are scattered on the floor beneath the piece. This was really, really good. You should really just have seen that in IRL.
Written by Mzwakhe Ndlovu
