Soft Friction brings together seven female artists — Craftwork (Nicole Yi Messier and Victoria Manganiello), Lindsay Degen, Tinglan Huang, Sarah Khadraoui, Shradha Kochhar, and Jacqueline Qiu — whose textile practices span installation, sculpture, and participatory media. Curated by Leo Yuan, the exhibition examines invisible labor, soft power, and craft's intersection with new technologies. Craftwork's large-scale AI-driven woven installation translates audience emotion into real-time light patterns; Kochhar transforms hand-spun khadi into monumental archives of South Asian intergenerational memory; Huang maps social dynamics onto domestic interiors through tapestry; Qiu pushes geometric landscape toward total abstraction in chenille and wool. Together the works trace textiles from indigenous lineage to algorithmic future.
