Vernissage Coded Threads

“The first computer was a loom. Weavers were the first programmers, and textile the fabric of the digital” Amalie Smith

The exhibition "Coded Threads" traces threads from the origin of the digital, the woven fabric, into today’s and tomorrow’s digital realities. The loom is the basis of binary coding: the thread can go over or under the warp, be a one or a zero. The thread is coded and acquires meaning – becomes an image, a pattern, a calculation, an algorithm. Everything can become data through the thread in the warp.

The exhibition brings together three artists who work with coded threads in their art in distinct ways. All artists allow the artistic process to expand through self-generating or collective systems.

Amalie Smith shows a suggestive installation with digitally dreamed images. Filipa César follows the intercontinental slave trade and the historical routes of the textile industry. In its wake, she finds woven threads that are coded with resistance. The art group Metahaven’s jacquard-woven textile works, produced on contemporary computerized looms, can be read as fictional maps or systems of thought. For this exhibition, they have created a new work consisting of two parallel weavings alongside moving images. The piece builds on sketches from the museum’s collection.

Several older works from the collection also find their place in the exhibition, forming an inner 
processing room, a memory center with possible connections that branch out into the contemporary parts of the exhibition.

Free admission

Inauguration 18:00
Museum Director Annie Lindberg and Curator Emil Nilsson welcome you to the opening. Bar and mingling in Birgit Rausing’s Hall all evening.

"Coded Threads" is shown at Skissernas Museum 4 December 2025–3 May 2026.
Read more about the exhibition Coded Threads

In 2025, Metahaven has done an artist residency at Skissernas Museum thanks to generous support from the LMK Foundation.