Icelandic Textile Center - Art Residency Catalog 2020 by Textilmiðstöð Íslands

Icelandic Textile Center Art Residency Catalog

2020

Icelandic Textile Center Art Residency Catalog 2020

Shahini Fakhourie Caroline Huf Nanny Rådenman Carina Petersson Ali Columbus Pascale Pettersson / Katinka Heremans Taryn DeLeon Mendiola Jantine Hos Morris Fox Solenne Jolivet Anne Marie Nielsen Annika Andersson Mirjam Hemström Renée Rudebrant Lotta Grimborg Sandra Lundberg Sunna Hansdóttir Jen Wilson Maia Grecco Kärt Ojavee

Shahini Fakhourie

January 2020

United States

My work addresses a new theme and time period with each piece, always beginning with one central idea. Keeping each collection aligned and creating one cohesive brand image, the themes used in each project share qualities that create a consistent yet ﬂuid brand. Social inequality, femininity, and sexuality are some of the themes inspiring the individual collections; delving into the past to create a collection that reﬂects the inspiration behind it and how that idea exists presently and in the future. Using a variety of materials such as watercolor, gouache, marker, pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, metals, silks, cottons to create illustrations and hand-crafted designs. Because the collections are varied, so too are the materials, processes, and exhibitions of the work. Each project consists of multiple works in a minimum of two mediums. Through the process of research and production, themes are uncovered, segueing into the next project.

Vararfeldur - front (top), back (bottom) 25 x 25 in Icelandic wool, thread weaving photos by Shahini Fakhourie

Caroline Huf

December 2019 - February 2020

Australia

The Vatnsdæla Monologue - work in progress I am a video artist, and during my residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre I set out to create work that explored the relationship between handmade textiles, weaving patterns and the algorithm of digital media. I wanted to further develop my ‘video-weavings’; a video editing technique in which I use weaving patterns to edit video. The work pays homage to the algorithm of weaving patterns from which the computer would emerge. Through this process, I attempt to weave order from a cacophony of disconnected yet intertwined voices, all temporarily held in balance between warp and weft. I left Australia on the longest day of the year in a blistering hot Summer and arrived in Reykjavik on the shortest day of the Icelandic Winter. When I left Australia, just before Christmas 2019, the catastrophic bushfires that destroyed vast tracts of forest and wildlife, had just started. When I returned on Valentines day 2020, the news of COVID was just beginning to emerge. At the residency, I had planned to time-lapse the view of the landscape over the six weeks of my stay. I also knew I wanted to incorporate the Vatnsdæla Saga somehow and incorporate the tapestry. I began by setting a camera up in the weaving studio to timelapse the view from the window, then, over the following weeks I moved the camera to other rooms to capture different views of the ocean or the mountains. I had imagined capturing the changing duration of the days, but instead the video caught snow storms sweeping in and obscuring the view, and snow piling up on the window pane. I had also planned to keep a video journal of the residency, about the effect of the Winter light, but instead I became absorbed in the life of the Textile centre and began documenting what was happening around me. I filmed and recorded sounds of the building Kvennaskólinn and its history, the river walks, and the artists working.

The Vatnsdæla Monologue stills from a woven video

Caroline Huf

Ragnheiður Þórsdóttir showed me her research on Icelandic weaving including Gudrun Jónasdóttir’s weaving journals from 1934-36 with their intricate hand painted patterns, and the TC2 loom. Jóhanna Pálmadóttir generously read of the Vatnsdæla Saga in Icelandic and allowed me to film her. I filmed the artists in residence as they worked meditatively for long hours spinning wool, embroidering the Vatnsdæla scroll, working on the TC2 loom, weaving tapestry, crocheting, and knitting. When I videoed the artists, I focussed on the skilful movements of their hands, the way their hands responded to the touch of the material, speaking through movement. Ragnheiður explained to me there is an Icelandic word ‘framlenging’ which describes the communication of the hands to the mind and mind to hand. I wanted to draw attention to the tactile knowledge of handmade textiles, to these thinking hands and to question the presence or absence of touch in the digital medium. I was also fascinated by the contrast between the stillness of the artists as they focussed intensely on their hands working the material, and what the artists listened to while they worked - such as music, books, or podcasts. While the artists listened to music, their hands listened to the materials. Then, I edited the time-lapse sequences so they looked like weaving, using patterns from Gudrun’s folio. The videos were cut into threads for warp and weft, then arranged in layers so that some threads appear in front of, or behind, other threads. With these timelapse weavings I added sound recordings of people weaving on the wooden looms, the sound of blizzards and rain. Then, I decided to ‘weave’ the video I had taken of the artists’ hands, and Jóhanna reading the saga. When these videos were edited into patterns, their sound tracks were also ‘woven’. Jóhanna’s reading of the saga was woven, making the story almost unintelligible. These ‘video weavings’ became a visual journal of my residency: My Vatnsdæla Monologue - work in progress. While hearing news of the fires at home, I watched the Blönduós river freeze and then the ice break up and flow out to sea, I watched the artists knitting, spinning, embroidering, weaving through the long Winter nights, I listened to the Blizzards and the gentle knocking wood of the looms.

The Vatnsdæla Monologue stills from a woven video

Nanny Rådenman

February 2020

Sweden

The last year I have worked with tapestry in my practice. A technique I really didn’t like at school. By coincidence I found myself making a tapestry one day and I felt so free, letting my emotions pass through me. Since then I can’t stop. The studio and the craft is like therapy to me, and I’m so grateful to have found my place in the loom.

OPPOSITE LEFT

Snowstorm 24/7, dreaming about springtime (sketches from Blönduós) 28 x 22 cm cotton, wool, ﬂax and silk tapestry OPPOSITE RIGHT

Interpretation of the Baldishol tapestry (sketches from Blönduós) 36 x 23.5 cm cotton, wool and ﬂax tapestry photos by Nanny Rådenman

Carina Petersson

February 2020

Sweden

There are so many romantic ideas about weaving: The preparational dedication, the tradition, the ornamental, the psychological experience captured in a raw material. I work and I weave and I gaze at the gap between what we can touch, see and smell and how this often has the capacity to derive nuances of the unconscious. Textiles remember. Maybe this is the same thing as romanticizing. My art practice derives from a passionate relationship with the intuitive yet conceptual handicraft. I spend my time processing wool of all sorts, washing, carding, spinning and experimenting with natural dyeing. Through tradition and psychological terms I often ﬁnd myself investigating characteristics of necessity and genuine connection. Through textile and cloth I see a natural union with the domestic and the place we call home. The constant relation to raw and unprocessed natural goods often leads to both research and practical work ending up in the kitchen. Thereby food, rituals and cooking act like material as well as theoretical matter in the practice. The belief that the way a material gets treated from the start will have unconditional effect on outcome and experience is fundamental in my work.

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Paté 52 x 23 cm cotton, handspun wool handwoven, tapestry OPPOSITE RIGHT

Shelter l 66 x 35 cm handspun wool handwoven, twill photos by Carina Petersson

Ali Columbus

February - March 2020

Canada

The moment your past leaves the present body is the moment in which a true residency begins, a residency in your breathing body. Utilizing local wool to spin, weave and felt I experienced the landscape and materials meld together.

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felting 5 x 7 in each carded Icelandic wool wet felting and found wood OPPOSITE BOTTOM

landscapes 5 x 7 in each Icelandic wool knit photos by Ali Columbus

Pascale Pettersson / Katinka Heremans

March 2020

Belgium

It was our intention to create 5 puppets/creatures based on a story that was wandering in our minds for some time... Always keeping that story in mind we searched for soft, fragile characters, showing vulnerability and clearly scarred by a long life. While searching through the National Puppetry Archive, stuffed with theatre puppets from all ages, we mainly detected two basic materials: Lime wood and (foam-)rubber. Traditional wood carving mostly results in very sturdy, heavy puppets while foam and/or rubber can barely stand the test of time. We had to look for other ways to express our sensitivities. The moment we discovered the possibilities within wool in general and different felting techniques in particular we set off on a very interesting journey. The Textile Center drew our attention and promised the perfect place to realise our woolly dreams... Coming to the Textile Center gave us the time needed to experiment with felt wool, in all its forms. We learned to create durable, yet very fragile looking characters with a complete diversity in character, feel and movement. Not only the Textile Center, but all of its magnificent surroundings in both nature and culture inspired us to create unique forms and textures we had never used before. The both of us have a different yet compatible approach to the creation process of a puppet/creature. We knew we could rely on our combined technical skills and experience but working together in a magical & distant place proved a new approach to our collaboration. We were very satisﬁed with our choice to come over during the wintertime. It suggested the desired fragility our characters needed... Experiencing the divergent Icelandic nature during the coldest, most harsh and at moments even ruthless season helped us expand our vision on its intricate beauty. The surreal highlight being the Northern Lights playing in the skies above the Textile Center. The world today, its vulnerable condition, caused everything to slow down. This also meant our puppets couldn’t get a chance at a worthy play... yet. We wish this climate will change soon for our puppets to come alive. The art of puppetry is a very physical, intense and close one to perform. Hopefully we’ll be able to create the play we’ve been dreaming of for so long now. May performers and the public meet again to enjoy and play.

Oude vrienden - Old Friends 30 cm felt wool dry needle felt technique photo by Pascale Pettersson

Taryn DeLeon Mendiola

February - May 2020

United States

In Iceland, I could breathe. I felt the land and the sea and the sky soothing me, telling me to work as I wish. I worked on my spinning and meditated, ﬁnally able to sit in a singular moment, while the balls of yarn accumulated at my feet. I embroidered, crocheted, and knit; I labored as I rested. I learned of farming, sheep, and ﬁbers; I documented patterns, fabrics, and textiles from across the centuries; I admired the work of old women who make gilt fabric with woolen thread. This land has always intrigued me, and calls to me still. I am forever grateful for the time I spent there.

A Jester’s Hood for the Winter ﬁt to artist’s head felted wool, cotton fabric, cotton thread, wool thread felting, sewing photo by Taryn DeLeon Mendiola

Jantine Hos

March - May 2020

The Netherlands

“In the eye of the storm” I arrived at the Textílmiðstöð Blönduós at the beginning of March, with a suitcase full of emotional luggage and the wish to work focused, uninterrupted on new work, in a new technique, away from felt and felting. And all the circumstances looked right. The Textílmiðstöð felt like a true safe haven. I started to embroider, crochet and use applique. Small works to practise, without a specific reason. Just the pleasure of feeling the needle going through the cloth. Enjoying the colours and structures. Next step was to bring these little works outdoor. Play with them on the beach, in the snow and make small videos with them supported by repetitive affirmations. It was a intuitive healing process that made me stronger every day. And then the Covid-19 crisis kicked in: uncertainty, excitement, vulnerability, around me and inside of me. But in retrospect I can say “I couldn’t have had a better place to be in isolation than in the Textílmiðstöð”. It was safe, comfortable, and with all the facilities and possibilities to be fully focused on myself and my work. And it was a good decision to stay 6 weeks longer than planned. So glad I had the opportunity to see the landscape, and the light, changing as the spring started to come around. The daily walks became longer and longer. And the empty landscape made me experience how “you can see so much if there is so little”. It’s those experiences that lifted my work to another level. Art is all about watching. My ability to watch got a great impulse with my Iceland-experience! (and made it hard to adjust to the constant visual impulses in my Dutch life again... but hé... that’s the price you pay). I’m thankful to the Textílmiðstöð that gave me this opportunity and especially that they allowed me to stay longer in the eye of the storm. 15-9-2020 sad? 10 x 10 cm cotton, wool embroidery, crochet, felting photo by rawelements.nl

Morris Fox

March - May 2020

Canada

I am a queer artist-practitioner and new-gothic writer. My work tongues peripherals, cruises a homesickness for Elysium, asking what is lost or gained in erasure & duplicity? Manifesting in a continuous questioning of “where goth is in globalization”, I frame works within my own subject position. Researching mourning, elegy and the co-contamination of material/being has led to works that perform without my presence — left for visitors to explore on their own terms of engagement — an interchange. During my stay as a textile intern and resident artist, I was concerned with multiple overlapping topics and research considerations. I was trying to think through how my textile and performance practices interweave, especially through a thread of sexuality. How does my body move with the weaving’s dance? How is the loom both a co-performer and mechanized apparatus? How does the process of natural dye allude to histories of sexuality, especially queer ones? How in turn do these processes — duets of warp and weft, saddened cloth allude and elide with dance, with remote study, and digital platforms? I used camouﬂage materials, velvet, peppermint tea dye, and also the social e-platform of IMVU to complicate the work I was doing within the relative isolation of my sojourn in Iceland. I made slow-motion dance performances, and worked through poetry, I looked towards disruptions of binary weaving patterns, and fragmented accretion as a methodology. I wanted to see how my work would translate into digital platforms, as well as how those platforms would contaminate my IRL work. Within the feeling of pause and cessation of activity brought on by the pandemic, how could failure be imagined instead as love or a way to deepen how we respond and are responsive to our environments, and the places we visit. What could I do beyond just coming to a place? What would I leave behind? What traces would I take with me back home? OPPOSITE TOP

Deep Dyed & Saddened 100 x 300 cm velvet, peppermint tea, iron powder, natural dye photo by Morris Fox OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Camouﬂage Out & Out dance performance, still image camouﬂage garments, digital video photo by Kerryn McMurdo

Solenne Jolivet

July 2020

France

My experience at the Textile Artist Center is an unforgettable one. At the very beginning of July, I was able to enjoy the midnight sun, with its clear nights and always varying lights. I was fascinated by the colors, I felt like I was in a landscape in high definition. The vegetation, the flowers, everything seemed very defined to me, and at the same time very fragile. In what other country can you see blue mud, orange rivers and neon green lichens? Each kilometer traveled offered new variations, never reproduced, never boring. Back in Paris, I wanted to translate into my work these impressions of fragility, of forms that appear and disappear, of unexpected color associations. I think this stay will have a long-term impact on my work. This chromatic and sensory experience indeed taught me to see the nuances and subtleties of the forms that exist in Nature, pushing me now towards types of threads which also evolve and change thanks to the meeting of other disturbing elements, such as water and dye.

My workshop in Paris photo by Victoria Tanto

Solenne Jolivet

Maculato petit #1 (detail) 29.7 x 21 cm viscose, polyester, painted silk embroidery photo by Victoria Tanto

Stampa #1 (detail) 29.7 x 21 cm silk and viscose embroidery (Lunéville) photo by Victoria Tanto

Anne Marie Nielsen

July 2020

Denmark

Nature is my inspiration and all the materials I work with in my textile art come from nature. During my Art Residency at Icelandic Textile Center I wanted to try out different methods of making textile print such as screen print with dyestuff from plants. I made prints on different kinds of fabrics both wool, silk, and linen. Arriving in Iceland the last day of June 2020 I was amazed by all the blue Alaska lupins. They were blooming almost everywhere so I wanted somehow to in cooperate leaves of lupin in my print. All these pieces of print made from natural dyes remind me of what an amazing gift to us nature is.

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Samples natural dyes on cotton, linen, wool and silk OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Samples natural dyes on silk screen printing photos by Anne Marie Nielsen

Annika Andersson

September 2020

Sweden

My 26 days in Blönduós will be a memory for life. To stay in one place, working, almost on your own (due to the pandemic) was a very special experience. Since this was my first visit to Iceland my aim was to keep my mind open for impressions and see how this would affect my work. And my residency really have had a great input to my artistic creation. During my stay I tried out a for me new technique, woven shibori, that has given rise to a series of new work that I call Landscape. In this series of work I combine dyeing, weaving and shaping the textile into soft sculptures. The Icelandic landscape with its blackness is a great inspiration source for these objects. To connect with a place in a more profound way is also a way to meet yourself. During my daily walks I collected finds of various kinds, mostly from the beaches. Some of these found items I put together in a kind of diary that I call Memory from a place - 26 days in Blönduós. Kvennaskólinn and the Icelandic Textile Center will always have a special room in my heart and I hope to come back again.

Landscape 1 70 x 20 cm wool and silk woven shibori photo by Hillevi Nagel

Annika Andersson

Memory of a place - 26 days in Blönduos (detail) 10 x 6 cm found item and textile dyed found item and 3D shibori textile object photo by Annika Andersson

Memory of a place - 26 days in Blönduos 50 x 70 cm found items and textile collage - dyed found items and 3D shibori textile objects photo by Hillevi Nagel

Mirjam Hemström

July & September 2020

Sweden

Franz Kafka wrote in his memoirs that “everyone carries a room about inside him”; for a weaver such a room is very likely envisaged as a textile space. Weaving a space is nothing new under the heavens: protective tents and heat insulating, ornate dwellings have been around from of old. Weaving a spatial experience though – that is something different. Japanese architecture, traditional as well as contemporary, has a way of looking at spatiality as subjective experience, a physical memory, a continuous process in the human mind. In ‘The Materiality of the Surface’, Fridh and Laurien describe spatial experience as ongoing and abstract rather than as form. That which is called textile, according to these propositions, would be an example of a flexible material whose transparent layers or reflections, suffused with light, stimulate the psyche. A textile surface, with its tactile, flexible and two-dimensional qualities, can be experienced as three-dimensional and spatial because of its changeability. I am interested in perception, here in its experiential sense; and in my artistic practice, three-dimensional weaving has come to embody thinking around spatiality. A while ago, my brother posed the philosophic question to me, “what is an interspace?” for which there was no ready answer. Interspace, a gap, can be an area or the distance between two very concrete objects, but it can also exist between two abstract things. Multi-layering has occupied me technically throughout my weaving practice: a way of creating everything from three-dimensional surfaces to architectonic modules woven in one piece – small spaces if you like. Microscopic at times, sometimes large enough for even crawling into. These spatial entities are like small worlds of their own, where the mind and imagination can roam free. A dream like quality is evoked between these woven walls. Purely psychologically, in accord with Fridh and Laurien’s ideas, the optical effect arising as the light bounces and gets filtered through the layers contributes to a spatial experience. An interplay of surface texture and patterning with form, form with the surrounding space, colour, light and shadow with spatial perception. Metaphor is also created: interspace as an expression of a longing for space. For quietude, slowness, time.

Weaving with Light (detail) photo by Mirjam Hemström

Mirjam Hemström

Weaving with Light 30 x 30 cm monofilament, shrinking yarn multi-layer weave photo by Mirjam Hemström

Weaving with Light 45 x 25 cm monofilament, shrinking yarn multi-layer weave photo by Mirjam Hemström

Mirjam Hemström

‘There are also other places where one can feel full of grief or hate, between the hall doors where the letters drop through the letterbox, for example. The hall door has small red and green glass panes, it is narrow and solemn, and the hall is full of clothes, skis and packing cases, but it is between the two doors that there is just enough room to stand and hate. If one hates in a big space one dies immediately. But if the space is narrow the hate turns inwards again and goes round and round one’s body and never reaches God.’ Tove Jansson’s description in ‘Sculptor’s Daughter’ of the space between the double outer doors hit home for me. It combines everyday objects with the strongest of feelings, physical and spiritual intertwined. My textile space contains practical rag rugs, an imitation sheepskin rya on the bed, sheer curtains filtering the light as well as figurative angel motifs giving me a sense for other dimensions. Textiles can of themselves define a space. Which is the reason for me stating that I weave whole spaces. My ambition is to offer people an experience of interspace, the space-between: a place for the mind to rest. An interlude, away from the informationoverload of our society. Here, it might be worth teasing apart the differences between the English words of feeling, emotion and sensation – three concepts rather loosely translated in Swedish as ‘feeling’ (känsla). Emotion and sensation do exist as Swedish words; ‘feeling’ in Swedish perhaps covers a mixture of meanings. Emotion denotes a movement of feeling or a mood. Then finally sensation: the slightly neglected concept describing a sense-based or bodily experience. It was Josef Albers, Anni Albers’ husband, who described art as coming about from the discrepancy between physical fact and psychological effect. The idea that psychological effects lie in the realm of perception is one I have researched in my work with digital, three dimensional handweaving at the Icelandic Textile Center. Right now, though, my focus is on the fact that both painter and weaver work with bodily reactions and psychology when using optical effects to evoke sensation.

Time takes on different guises. As both hand and industrial weaver, I have discovered how time becomes embodied as passing moments are discerned. Handweaving is rendering the making process visible, rather than erasing any traces of the work of the hand, and by letting the light of day play over the surfaces and material, handwoven work becomes in various ways a manifestation of time. My project at the Icelandic Textile Center was in a similar way an exploration of interspace as well as the experience of daydreaming type sensations. Surfaces, the encounter between surfaces and the meeting of surface and form create spatial perception, as the observer beholds or moves around an object. An informing process takes place: it might have the appearance of a shiny or rough surface, or perhaps have more to do with the composition in the room itself – but deciphered, we see it contains stimulus, well-being and is a form of wordless communication, of softplay for time out. (Lovely.) I am intrigued by the word metamorphosis. Metamorphosis means transformation. Transformation or change can come, as I have attempted to indicate here, through spatial perceptions arising from the interplay of light, textiles and movement. Weave, however, today also stands at an exciting juncture, a weave awakening, where its practice is being rediscovered by new practitioners and thereby at times taking on other forms. Digital weaving is relevant not just for industry; it is for a designer an interest in the technical challenges of weave that consists of thread moving through a multiplicity of layers and craft practice that is digitalised and facilitates complex, intricate drafts. Weaving as a narrative where thread acts as the principal character, the textile as text, is a wonderful metaphor. This is perhaps never so concrete as for rag rug weavers: a piece of cloth is taken apart and cut into strips, then pick by pick the pattern is built up again, like Kasuri. The more skilled the weaver, the more information about the origin of the weave can be gleaned. The thread, or line, in conversation. But it also creates surfaces. Kandinsky, in 1926, noted that a special capacity of the line is its ability to form a surface. And surfaces in turn, as we established, form space. In my ongoing research on dimensional weaving for a spatial purpose, I aim to affect the atmosphere. I hope that my findings in Blönduós eventually will be realised in grande scale. A stepping into the role of Sensation Director.

Renée Rudebrant

September 2020

Sweden

During my growing up years, I was often in the Swedish archipelago. It has given me a special feeling for islands and their character. Of course, the size of an island has its significance. But there is a certain feeling of vulnerability, limitations of the water that surrounds. There is also a sense of inﬁnity that appeals to me. Then each island creates a form of color scale, breadth and drama. This has led me to enjoy visiting islands and shaping my impressions during my stay on a speciﬁc island. During my stay at the Textile Center in Blönduós, I worked to get rid of my impressions from my walks in the local area and my daily observations of the sea shifts. In this work, I have worked with a form of textile collage technique where I build my works together from smaller embroidered pieces of traditional and modern embroidery techniques. I enjoyed the fact that time felt endless and being able to give myself time to work undisturbed for a long time.

Islands 20 x 150 cm each embroidery photos by Renée Rudebrant

Lotta Grimborg

October 2020

Sweden

I use tiny glass beads and various stitching techniques to embroider a narrative. During the ﬁrst 6 days of my Icelandic experience I was kept isolated due to the Covid pandemic. Stuck in a hotel room in Reykjavik, except from short walks in the neighbourhood, the everyday objects and landmarks surrounding me became important details. I started to embroider images of isolation. When I was released from quarantine I could ﬁnally collect memories of Icelandic nature and the surroundings of Blönduós. Later on I put these embroidered images together in a quilt. The quilt became a storyline of my trip to Iceland, starting in isolation and ending in freedom.

From Reykjavik to Blönduós 75 x 100 cm cotton, mouline yarn, glass beads embroidery and quilt photo by Lotta Grimborg

Sandra Lundberg

October 2020

Sweden

What you see are three different ongoing embroideries which I began working with during my stay at the residency. I started the residency with an idea to make a large embroidery piece depicting hands in the making. Me and my hands as part of my body’s knowledge making crochet. Using needle and thread through embroidery I wanted to emphasise the pedagogical part in handicraft rituals, repetitive movement, as well as a time-consuming obsession. I brought textile material that I carefully collected in my surroundings, through different aspects of time, used and worn-out fabric that carries unknown historic layers that got me intrigued. I decided to pick up a long-lost knowledge, my handwriting, which is connected to a memory of my grandfather that once went to Iceland. Nature grows on you and I easily got devoured by it. Going on treasure hunt among seaweed and half eaten crabs. Also capturing perspectives from where I was situated. In my mind drifting watching mountains come and go. To be continued...

Untitled 1 50 x 65 cm linen and cotton fabric embroidery photo by Sandra Lundberg

Sandra Lundberg

Untitled 2 23 x 34 cm cotton fabric and linen thread embroidery photo by Sandra Lundberg

Untitled 3 40 x 25 cm cotton fabric embroidery photo by Sandra Lundberg

Sunna Hansdóttir

October 2020

Sweden

During my time at the Textile Center I found time and peace to work closely and intensely with my painting, being inﬂuenced by the scenic view from the workspace as well as small details found on my walks trough Blönduós, for example I found a way to incorporate the black sand from the beaches in my painting.

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Twelve 100 x 70 cm oil painting and silk paint on canvas painting OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Zoom 52 x 37 cm canvas and oil paint painting photos by Sunna Hansdóttir

Jen Wilson

November 2020

United States

My month-long residency at the Textile Center gave me the time and studio space to focus on and experiment with quilting. The quilt is historically utilitarian and functional, yet symbolizes family and connection between past and present. Materials used in quilting were often a response to the environment and available resources. Limited to the various fabrics I had brought with me, I experimented with quilting on cotton, wool, lyocell, and synthetic fabrics. The incredible landscape of Northwestern Iceland - the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the snow - ampliﬁed the creative space and inﬂuenced my work. Since my time at the Textile Center I have been integrating more quilted fabric into my sewing and design practice.

Untitled 95 x 73 cm cotton quilted photo by Jen Wilson

Maia Grecco

October - November 2020

Canada

Over the course of my residency I chose to focus on strengthening my tapestry weaving abilities and observing the natural phenomena surrounding me. After a fortuitous night of gazing at the aurora, I captured images of it as it swept across the starry sky. Upon observing these images I was struck by the energy and ﬂuidity of the light formations. These are a series of compositions in which I’ve attempted to capture the perfect playfulness of each aurora image. Each is like a step in its brilliant dance. My six small frames provided me the chance to preserve a memory and prolong its joyful effects, which in essence is what the practice of weaving has always given me.

Aurora Composition #1-6 5 x 7 in each Icelandic wool tapestry weaving photo by Maia Grecco

Kärt Ojavee

October - November 2020

Estonia

Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 8 What makes one fabric valuable and another one worthless? The importance of a piece of fabric will be defined not only by the man-hours spent for producing it or by the rarity of the material but largely by the fact how we attach value to the fabric. How does the attached value depend on the material of the fiber, the technology of textile production or the colour? Attached or immanent value, in turn, can direct the course of the world history. The desire by European upper class for comfortable cotton and sleek silk was one of these engines that promoted capitalism as a universal economical system and that enthused European countries to colonize Asia, Africa and America. What are the qualities allowing a piece of white fabric to be associated either with peace and benevolence in some places, with abundance and supremacy in other places, and in some countries to be used as a bride token, a detonating fuse or simply a scarf? There are three pieces of fabric with completely different purpose woven together at the current exhibition “Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 8”, while losing the social distinction and bringing these back to their initial state of being a fabric.

Kärt Ojavee is a designer, artist and lecturer. In her artwork, Ojavee combines contemporary technological innovation and textile art while actively contributing to its practical and theoretical development. Her recent collaboration projects involve working also in the field of costume art and performing arts. In 2013, Ojavee defended her Doctoral thesis “Active Smart Interior textiles” at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Kärt Ojavee was an Icelandic Textile Center scholarship recipient in 2020. Her residency was funded by Nordic Culture Point: the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme. Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 8 photo by Mari Volens

Kärt Ojavee

1. One long stretch of white fabric can symbolize pureness, benevolence, foresightedness, compassion and many more qualities especially in Tibet and Mongolia. Even if historically these shawls or khatas have been made of silk, today these can be also made of polyester or cotton. Khatas – these treasured, long, white fabrics – are given as a token of happiness on important occasions such as the wedding, funeral, birth of a baby, graduation, or simply when guests arrive or leave. In several areas of West-Africa and Melanesia, a large piece of such fabric can function as an essential currency that can be also used as a bride token. What makes a fabric more valuable - being resistant or vice versa, its fugacity?

2. In 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, declared in a radio programme that the Soviet Union was not bombing Finland as it was stated by the evil, “imperialistic” media, but throwing food aid to the starving Finns from the planes. Finns started to call the RRAB-3 bombs that were thrown by the Soviet planes as “Molotov Bread Baskets”. They also offered Mr Molotov and the Soviet tank crewmen Molotov cocktails for quenching their thirst – these were hand-held bottle firebombs, filled with petrol, gasoline or other flammable liquid where the fuse was a piece of fabric immersed by petrol. When the bottles were used again in BLM protests in Maidan, an old question arose: what kind of fabric would serve the best for the fuse? A thick or thin fabric? A linen or cotton one?

OPPOSITE TOP

Episode 1 fusible yarn, paper OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Episode 2 linen, paper photos by Mari Volens

Kärt Ojavee

3. Hugo Grotius, father of international law, stated in early 17th century that according to a very old custom, waving of a white flag should be interpreted as an explicit sign of surrendering and initiating peace negotiations. It is critical that the flag would be visible in order to achieve its purpose. Therefore, it would be perhaps the most logical to use as large and cheap piece of fabric as possible. What should one do in case there is no bedsheet at hand? For instance, office workers have the possibility to wave the bright white A4 sheets of paper. What if one has to leave a war crisis and there is only a scarf or a wedding dress nearby? Head over heels, if peace is really the most important thing then it probably should be desired and declared with the most expensive material! 8. Pileus (or zucchetto, pileolus, submitrale, calotte or soli deo) is a small, round cousin of the beret, worn by the heads of Catholic, Anglican and the Syriac Orthodox churches. First the hats were worn to protect tonsure or the shaved bare head, especially when the mitre was placed on top of it. Today, the pilei are worn separately; and according to the tradition from the past century, when the pope receives a pileus, he will take one from his head and gives it in return. The small hat narrows into a screw-like eyelet with a silk shaft that allows the wearer comfortably to take it off and put it back. The descriptions of the duplicitousness Catholic church often mention the business of indulgence and orgies taken place in the Pope’s palace; but perhaps the fact that the luxurious smoothness of this superb tiny silk eyelet that can be experienced only by the fingers touching it is the best summary of all the secular opulence of the much cursed religious life. Texts: Gustav Kalm, Exhibition design: Valge Kuup Graphic, design: Margus Tamm Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. The artist’s gratitude to: Icelandic Textile Center (Katharina Schneider, Jóhanna Erla Pálmadóttir, Elsa Arnardóttir), department of textile design at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Eva-Liisa Kriis, Jennifer Wilson, Juulia Aleksandra Mikson.

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Episode 3 seaweed, silk (from Japan, South-Africa), eider down RIGHT

Episode 8 silk photos by Mari Volens

ISSN 2547-7358 Published in 2021 by Icelandic Textile Center Árbraut 31 540 Blönduós Editor, Design & Layout: Cornelia Theimer Gardella Managing Editor: Katharina Schneider Front & Back Cover Image: Solenne Jolivet, “Stampa #1 (detail)”, photo by Victoria Tanto © Icelandic Textile Center 2021