Although AIR is reestablished by those dense colonies of tiny beings in the oceans and purified by the forested jungles on which all life depends, it is nonetheless fragile, easily damaged by the effects of Humanity’s supposedly grand steps forward. We have come to interweave our existence with ways of using up everything that surrounds us as we appropriate every space, resource, object of our surroundings in a limitless race of production and consumption. The results of our unilateral development are based on abuse and unconsciousness pushed by a belief in the notion of progress.

AIR is what gives context to our space. It configures our lives, our communication, our doings. It gives us a palpable site in this great cosmos. In molding the very atmosphere of matter on Earth, AIR is also what gives meaning and impulses thinking. And through thought, we have ART, which is produced through ideas and made tangible in diverse practices and processes. Quests and issues are reflected directly or indirectly in all Art.

Now more than a decade since the beginning of a new century, the spaces for reflection, which were celebrated with the advent of a new Millennium, have not been sustained. The chain of events in the world has not slackened its pace, but rather accelerated it indeed. Constant consumption continues, with its consequential contamination, shrinking the remaining green spaces. The avaricious extraction of minerals, of live and non-renewable resources seems unstoppable.

The role of the artist is multifarious. No longer, as in some utopic Past, can the current reality be ignored, nor such preoccupations regarding the subsistence of life be whitewashed. Everyone depends on these conditions and interactions, if survival and equality amongst Human beings are desired goals. It is not only the daily and grand scale economic issues that provoke the actual dilemma, whilst some are wrapped in certain benefits; but rather, from long ago, environmental situations have had repercussions in local social issues. At this point of human history, as the preponderant unbalance of world riches grows, large populations of people are belittled and excluded by their own species.

The element AIR is common, necessary, and shared by every living being – it unites us all. TEXTIles too are a key, shared bond. In any ramification, TEXTIles are known, felt, and donned by every member of the Human Race. Yet given that TEXTIles are marginal to the great ART currents of the dominant cannon in current Western culture, they are, nonetheless, sustained by exponents of millenary cultures and experimental artists. The challenge is posed: to make a space for reflecting on this outstanding and vital element- AIR – through a commonly known medium - textiles. We propose to align the actual current debate on AIR in a relevant artistic context, expressed in multiple and varied representations through events of the VI International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art WTA -AIR in Mexico in 2011.