Woven Automatic translate

The exhibition “Woven” will open at the EKATERINA Cultural Foundation on March 15, 2024. The exhibition features more than 90 works, representing how diverse the practice of working with textiles can be.

Curator: Tatyana Rykova, chief curator of the EKATERINA Cultural Foundation

The exhibition “Woven” will open at the EKATERINA Cultural Foundation on March 15, 2024. The exhibition features more than 90 works, representing how diverse the practice of working with textiles can be.

The woven thread is one of the earliest and most recognizable mythological images. The word fabric has many meanings: it is the basis of a work of art, an anatomical structure, and, of course, matter. Originally used to create clothing and household items, over time textiles developed into an independent art direction, and artists working with them began to use all the plastic possibilities of this incredibly diverse material.

In recent decades, artistic textiles have gone beyond the scope of decorative art and successfully exist in the field of contemporary art, including due to the fact that they have ceased to be just a means of expression, sometimes turning into an object of research, into an artistic statement itself. Traditional techniques of weaving, embroidery and collage in the works of the authors are organically combined with technological experiments, revealing new meanings for familiar artistic images.

At the exhibition at the EKATERINA Cultural Foundation, we propose to look at artistic textiles in a fairly broad context, turning to the works of the late 20th - early 21st centuries, with several earlier examples. Four sections of the exhibition highlight the different forms of textile use.

The softness and lightness of the material, swaying with the movement of air, often attracts artists who use the canvas as a kind of canvas. In the works of Maria Arendt, Lisa Olshanskaya and Asya Marakulina, light textile fabric is combined with emphatically graphic monochrome embroidery, thanks to which the structure of the fabric is even better revealed.

Other artists are turning to the unique quality of textiles—the ability to interact with oneself. In this section of the exhibition, the main place is given to textile collage: by sewing together scraps of different texture and color, the artists build the necessary compositions, creating unexpected connotations. The exhibition presents the iconic work of Lydia Masterkova “Composition. Priluki,” in whose work the use of fabric fragments and the collage principle of work occupied an important place. In the textile works of Vitaly Tyurlik, a large place is given to improvisation and chance. The works, rich in composition, are sewn from many small fragments of disused fabric, which thus receives a second life. Anya Grositskaya’s works were inspired by optical illusions - pareidolia. The artist’s fabric-cut shapes were found in melting snow, trees, cracks and tangled wires. Sewn together, they turned into a large garden in which there is no “wrong side”.

One of the most diverse sections of the exhibition is dedicated to works in which traditional technologies and textile principles of work are combined with an innovative approach to the material itself. A lace sculpture of Nadya Zubareva is woven from a rough metal mesh. The vulnerability of the structure, and at the same time, the monumentality of the work itself, gives rise to a surprisingly accurate and paradoxical image.

Other authors turn to traditional forms of working with textiles, transferring bright and sometimes ironic artistic images onto them. Thus, the ornament on the T.V. Goodbye carpet, designed by Julia Markos, is a screensaver that appeared on every Soviet TV after the end of the program schedule. Evgenia Evart in her work “Under Water” addresses the current environmental agenda: a fish woven from linen and cotton, surrounded by waves of polyethylene and other plastic fish, becomes a symbol of the fragility of the ecosystem. In the works of artist Mila Vvedenskaya, a special role is played by the structure of the fabric: shimmering and floating, it is a subtle space in which form is inseparable from content.

Another section brings together works that are an example of the synthesis of different media, thereby presenting an even greater potential of textiles in the field of contemporary art. Site-specific objects occupy an important place among these works. The exhibition presents Alexandra Ostrovskaya’s “Fulcrum Point” object, originally prepared for Milovid’s pavilion in Tsaritsyno.

Of course, this division is quite arbitrary, but it allows us to draw unexpected parallels between the works and look at them in a new way. And the exhibition space itself turns out to be, in fact, also woven - from the works presented in the exhibition.

As part of the project, curatorial excursions are planned, master classes and meetings with artists will be held.