Softwear

With Crystal Bennes, daniela brill estrada & Monica C. LoCascio, Charlotte Johannesson, Steph Linn, Shannon Swinburn

Curated by Kira Wainstein

Softwear is an apexart Open Call Exhibition 2026-27

Looms ran on binary code over a century before computers.

In 1804, the Jacquard loom revolutionised weaving by using punched cards to automate textile production. The code stored in the holes of the cards allowed complex images to be programmed into fabric. Many decades later, the punch-card system was essential in the development of early computers, translating data and instructions into a language that could be read by digital machines. This foundational principle of computers was first harnessed not by scientists or engineers, but by weavers.

Like weaving, the history of computers is built on manual, precise, and often gendered labour. Before the development of digital computers, women were employed as ‘human computers’ to solve mathematical problems by hand in a range of fields including aeronautics and astronomy. Ada Lovelace published the first ever computer program in 1843, and, a century later, an all-women team programmed ENIAC, one of the first modern computers.

Code, labour, and women have defined the histories of both textiles and computation.

Stories are embedded within the warp and weft of a tapestry, the holes of a punch card, and the string of digits of a computer code. The artworks in this exhibition excavate these stories – translating code into cloth, image into binary data, and archive into weave – making visible the invisible and recovering what has been hidden beneath layers of code and thread.

Crystal Bennes (b. 1981, USA, lives Edinburgh) is an artist and writer who examines suppressed histories, knowledge systems and power structures across a variety of media including tapestries, soap sculptures, photographs and publications. She holds a PhD in Classics from King’s College London and, after working in the U.S. Senate and as an architecture and design journalist, retrained as an artist with an MFA from Aalto University, Helsinki and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and a practice-based PhD from Northumbria University, Newcastle. Recent solo exhibitions include NOUA, Bodø, and Galleri Format, Malmö (both 2025), and her photobooks include Klara and the Bomb (2022) and the forthcoming We Eat the Earth (2026). She has been artist-in-residence at Edinburgh College of Art and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

daniela brill estrada (b. 1989, Bogotá, lives Vienna) is an artist, researcher and teacher working across installation, sculpture, drawing and poetry to explore how life emerges from geological and chemical materials. She studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, completed a BA in Transdisciplinary Arts and an MA in Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and is a PhD candidate at the Art X Science School for Transformation, Linz and Vienna. She has worked with CERN, the SETI Institute, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, and the Hubble Space Telescope. Recent group exhibitions include The Institute of Queer Ecology: I Wish We Had More Time, KunstHausWien (2026); Quantum Untangled, Science Gallery, London (2026); and Extraterrestrial Posthumanism, Ectopia Lab, Lisbon (2025–26).

Monica C. LoCascio (b. 1984, Riyadh, lives Vienna) is a transdisciplinary artist who uses heritage craft techniques to explore invisible phenomena such as consciousness, theoretical physics and epigenetics. She holds a BA in New Media & Visual Arts from Emerson College, Boston, and an MA in Art & Science from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and has worked with institutions including CERN, the University of Nottingham, and the Museum of Natural History, Vienna. Recent group exhibitions include Quantum Untangled, Science Gallery, London (2026); Touch Nature, Austrian Cultural Forum, London (2026); and It’s a World Machine, ERES Stiftung, Munich (2023).

Charlotte Johannesson (b. 1943, Malmö, lives Skanör) is a pioneering textile and digital artist who works across the loom and the computer. Trained as a weaver, she began creating political tapestries in the 1970s, and in 1981 co-founded Scandinavia’s first digital arts laboratory, the Digital Theatre, Malmö. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg and Nottingham Contemporary (both 2023), and group exhibitions including New Humans: Memories of the Future, The New Museum, New York (2026); Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991, Kunsthalle Wien and Mudam Luxembourg (2024–25); and the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams (2022). Her work is held in collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Steph Linn (b. 1995, USA, lives London) is an artist who uses sculpture, installation and publications to examine the history of knitting and computation. They completed an MA/MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Their work was recently included in Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2026). In 2024 they published Factory of One, a book on the knitting machine's connections to revolution, violence and the history of computing. They teach feminist welding at Blackhorse Workshop and co-run the Queer Metal Club.

Shannon Swinburn (b. 1993, Portsmouth, lives London) is a textile artist whose practice explores the intersection of craft and computation, working across weaving, metalwork and computing. She holds an MA in Textiles from the Royal College of Art and a BA in Graphic Design from Central Saint Martins. Recent group exhibitions include The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial, Saatchi Gallery, London (2026), and Clutch City Craft, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2026), and she has received the Weavers’ Award at Cockpit and the Sarabande Foundation Studio Residency.

No Show Space is pleased to be the venue for Softwear an apexart Open Call Exhibition 2026-27, curated by Kira Wainstein.

Opening hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 6 pm or by appointment
No Show Space, 39 Temple Street, London E2 6QQ