At the Weisman Art Museum, an age-old craft takes on modern new meanings

In RugLife, a new exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum, rugs become the messengers of our stories. These familiar objects — walked on, spilled on, covered up with tables and furniture — become platforms for histories, conflicts and ideas that extend far beyond our homes.

From a distance, Sonya Clark’s “Comb Carpet” (2008), a celebration of Black barber shops and salons, looks like soft waves of billowing black cushions. Up close, the material is revealed to be thousands of plastic combs, sharp teeth angled upwards.

In Andrea Zittel‘s “Carpet Furniture: Drop Leaf Table” (1993), a flat rug juts upward at a 90-degree angle. Nevin Aladağ weaves a traditional Turkish rug to look like a basketball court for “Pattern Matching, Purple-Blue (2016).”

Curators Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox,