A new exhibition dedicated to textile-making continues our series of projects about traditional crafts
The language of cloth-making is universal and has a unique power to unite cultures and generations. This art show follows the process of weaving from the making of the thread to the final stages of cloth-printing.
This is our second project from a series of exhibitions dedicated to arts and crafts of Vladimir region. Previously we have been researching the crystal glass-making in exhibition ‘Razzle-Dazzle’. Our approach is focused on showing technical process through visual allusions borrowed from the artworks: this is how product designers look for inspiration in every little thing.
We have noticed that our method can have a great impact on the way how we see the world: as curating team we use it as an opportunity to present famous authors in an unexpected context. Our main instrument is the collection of MYRA Creative Community, a truly unique compilation of art, rare books and cultural artefacts that never fails to surprise. By the way, for this project we have discovered a very rare toy from MYRA Collection: weaving loom made for kids.
The art show consists of three chapters. First one is dedicated to the art of thread spinning, the second tells a story about weaving and the third shows how the cloth gets its pattern and colour.
To create this story, we have united with museum-laboratory ‘Silk Factory’ from Kolomna, the team of Ivanovo’s Alchemist hotel which is also in charge of textile company Alfa-Trade and company ‘Shuya’s Chintz’: a cloth is not woven from a single thread, so is our exhibition and its technical exhibits.
Threads of silk dyed with natural components are exhibited with pattern-printing templates and soft clouds of cotton yarn.
We have also invited Alina Pinsky Gallery to join us with screen prints of Tatyana Andreeva. These artworks are exhibited with the samples of cloth patterns from MYRA Collection, created by the mother of Tatyana Andreeva, Anna Andreeva, the chief artist of textile factory ‘Krasnaya Roza’ (Red Rose).
‘Gathering’ Gallery have participated with the artworks of Tima Illarionov and 665806 exploring the motif of a net.
Artist Lisa Bobkova has introduced her artworks Object No. 6 and ink drawing from the series ‘Opuses’: this pieces illustrate the intersection of threads in a cloth and transitional stage of yarn-making.
The artist Anna Lapshinova has also joined the exhibition with a very personal installation ‘Spinners’. Anna’s great-grandmother and grandmother have been working at a melange factory: the installation uses two pieces of fabrics produced by them. Photographs of mother and daughter, transferred to the surface of the canvas, erase the anonymity of the weaving factory’s craftsmen: each person was merely a part of a large industrial machine. And the artist’s grandmother Antonina Ivanovna’s lively story about her experience as a spinner makes the process of fabric production tangible and humane for the viewer.
The exhibition also includes works created as the part of MYRA Creative Community artist residence in Kideksha: this year it was dedicated to weaving. The objects by Anna Grositskaya and Anna Chervonna were made specifically for the exhibition and were inspired by Kideksha and Suzdal.
The work ‘Quiet Bell’ by Anna Grositskaya was created from the confrontation between the deafening silence of winter landscape of the central zone and the no less deafening ringing of bells. These two polar sensations became the basis of the installation: the textile from which the bells are woven does not make a sound, but all the polyphony is concentrated in the practice of weaving itself. ‘The threads in homespun carpets are torn strips of old linen, former clothes. These threads with traces of someone’s life were woven into such familiar village rugs, the silent keepers of other people’s stories underfoot,’ says Anna. ‘Under the dome of threads, the visitor can try to hear these stories, himself and the surrounding space.’
Anna Chervonna, also our artist-in-residence, have presented the artwork ‘Building Spot’. The artist uses brass mesh in her works: the airy interweaving of this material corresponds to the main themes of Anna’s practice: the irreversibility of time and the preservation of memory. In ‘Building Spot’ introduces the plan of the house that is now MYRA art residence in Kideksha. Initially it was an ordinary five-walled izba, which is still pretty common in rural Russia, but each of them has its own personal story. Even when building a typical home, people try to retain part of the space that becomes his home. The development of this ‘building spot’ — choosing the size of the hut and its location on the site, laying the foundation — resembles the development of a land before sowing. The pattern of furrows on a plowed field visually rhymes with both the lines of the architectural plan of the building and with weaving patterns. The basic motif of the grid organically unites, on the one hand, completely incompatible things, and on the other hand, archetypal images that are common and close to each of us.
The exhibition ‘A Cloth Is Not Woven From A Single Thread. Weaving As A Process’ is on view till December 15 at MYRA Cultural Center in Suzdal.
