La Mémoire,

1972, reconstructed 2001

<p> In the mid-1960s and 1970s, the American textile artist Sheila Hicks executed large-scale fiber-based commissions for major corporations including Air France, CBS, and AT&amp;T. Her ambitious installations brought vibrant colors and varied textures to minimalist, utilitarian offices, responding to concerns that modern white-collar workspaces were dehumanizing and cold. These cords are from Hicks’s now-disassembled 1972 commission for IBM’s headquarters in Paris’s La Défense district. With their subtle variations in color and pattern, they call attention to the manual labor of textile work, which Hicks studied first at Yale University in the 1950s and then in Mexico, India, and Morocco in the 1960s. </p> <p> Comparative image: Installation view of <em>La Memoire</em>, 1972. Linen, silk, wool, and synthetic fibers, 304.8 x 447 cm. IBM Headquarters, La Defense, Paris. © 1972 Sheila Hicks / Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins &amp; Co., New York </p> <br>