Soft Friction

THE BLANC is pleased to present Soft Friction, a group exhibition bringing together seven female artists whose work in textiles explores invisible labor, soft power, and the changing realm of craft with new technologies.

Curated by Leo Yuan, the exhibition features artists Craftwork (Nicole Yi Messier and Victoria Manganiello), Lindsay Degen, Tinglan Huang, Sarah Khadraoui, Shradha Kochhar, and Jacqueline Qiu. Soft Friction’s textiles span installation, sculpture, and participatory media. Together, these works examine how the versatility of the medium speaks to its applications in technology, fashion, and the boundaries of craft.

The visual centerpiece is Craftwork’s large-scale installation Ancient Futures, a site-specific installation of 16 woven panels integrated with fiber optics and sensors. Using an AI-driven sentiment analysis script, the work processes audience stories into real-time light patterns. As the cloth evolves, AI translates the emotional weight of these narratives into shifting colors—mapping joy to red or frustration to blue—resulting in a reactive tapestry that finds as much meaning in its technical ambiguity as in its accuracy.

Craftwork will also present Slow Medium, a new series of woven works inspired by lichen's ancient, expansive growth, translating organic spread into dimensional cloth through variations in thread density. A knitting machine will be displayed in the gallery, alongside clips from The Domestic Machine, a documentary produced by Craftwork about the culture and community around knitting.

Returning to the intimate, manual origins of the knitted thread, Shradha Kochhar’s work anchors itself in material memory and indigenous lineage. Utilizing hand-spun khadi and organic kala cotton, her hand-knitted forms set against sheer, mesh backdrops works serve as a physical archive of South Asian narratives. By transforming traditional women’s work into monumental forms, Kochhar explores the intersections of invisible labor and intergenerational healing.

The Toronto-based artist Tinglan Huang takes a more painterly approach to the medium, utilizing tapestry and double-weaving to explore the "box" of domesticity. Her vibrant compositions use furniture as proxies for social dynamics, mapping interpersonal relationships onto interior scenes. By revealing the hidden stories and invisible boundaries woven into our daily trajectories, Huang illustrates how these soft architectures offer both protection and constraint.

Jacqueline Qiu will present intimate, small-scale tapestries woven from chenille and wool. The Prey and Pray diptych takes inspiration from the flow of energy in moments of feast, while Midnight Prairie and Dawn and Dusk reference more tender moments of contemplation. By translating the raw movement and fleeting stillness found in landscapes to woven form, Qiu pushes her geometric compositions to the point of total abstraction.

Other works foreground the relationship between textiles and familial memory. Sarah Khadraoui utilizes hand and jacquard weaving to find solace in the rhythmic repetition of textile production. Her practice translates personal biographies—from childhood doodles to the silhouette of her mother's Moroccan wedding dress—into complex, tactile narratives that bridge the gap between technology and tradition.

Lindsay Degen will present sweaters designed and made by her brand DEGEN, which bridges the gap between handcraft and industry by reimagining traditional techniques for a contemporary audience. These works celebrate the connection between maker and wearer, presenting fashion not as a fixed commodity, but as an evolving practice of collective intention.

Soft Friction will be on view from May 15 through June 27, 2026, in THE BLANC’s ground floor gallery. An opening reception will be held on May 15 from 6–8pm.

On View: May 15 - June 27, 2026

Gallery Hours: 11AM-5PM, Wed - Sat

Opening reception: 6-8pm, May 15

Location: THE BLANC, 15 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016