BIO
L Vinebaum, PhD is a scholar, artist, and educator working at the intersections of textiles and politics. They have a wildly interdisciplinary practice that spans academic research and writing, visual essays, curating, and artworks in media including print, drawing, textiles, neon, installation, and performance. They often draw inspiration from historical instances of collective organizing , particularly in movements for better living and working conditions in the textile and garment industries in the US and Canada.
Dr. Vinebaum is co-curator of the major exhibition On Loss & Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9772/on-loss-… at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the co-editor of the accompanying book published by Yale University Press and the Art Institute of Chicago (october 2025). They were on the Board of Directors of the Textile Society of America from 2020-2024, and served as co-vice president and academic symposia chair of the 2024 international symposium titled Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles. They held the position of associate editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Textile: Cloth and Culture from 2014 to 2020.
L Vinebaum is an Associate Professor of Fiber and Material Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, where they are affiliated full-time faculty in the department of Art History, Theory and Criticism. Dr. Vinebaum holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), an MA in Textiles also from Goldsmiths, and a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, Québec (Canada).
Their publications include commissioned book chapters in major craft and textile anthologies like A Companion to Textile Culture (Wiley), Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change (Routledge), Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm 1930-present (Routledge), and The Handbook of Textile Culture (Bloomsbury Academic). Published writings also include catalog essays and articles for Black Dog Press, YYZ Press Surface Design Journal, Counter-Signals, Mana Contemporary, Cooper Cole Gallery, and the Journal of Modern Craft online. They are the co-editor, with Dr. Kirsty Robertson, of “Crafting Community”, a special issue of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture (Vol. 14 No. 2, 2016). Dr. Vinebaum has presented papers and chaired sessions at international academic conferences, including College Art Association, the association for the study of arts of the present, Textile Society of America Biennial Symposia, Performance Studies International, Shared Ground: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Craft Studies, and The Subversive Stitch Revisited: The Politics of Cloth. They are the recipient of a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft,Craft Research Fund Travel Grants also from the Center for Craft (2016 and 2013), a Research Fellowship from the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Center for Research and Collaboration at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017), and multiple Faculty Enrichment Grants from the Dean's Office at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Exhibitions and performances include solo shows at Sector 2337 and Spudnik Press, Grace Exhibition Space, For the Thundercloud Generation, the Institute for Labor Generosity and Uniforms, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, with group exhibitions and screenings festivals and venues including Museum of Contemporary Craft, Woman Made Gallery, Heaven Gallery, Weinberg Newton Gallery, Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, Open Engagement, Freewaves Festival of New Media Arts, The New York Video Festival, Videomedeja, Videonale, Exploding Cinema, VideoFormes, and the European Media Art Festival.