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Kusama with PUMPKIN 2010
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This has strong resonance with the depiction of madness and powerlessness in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s semi-autobiographical story, The Yellow Wallpaper(1892), a key work of American feminist literature. The piece refers to attitudes to women’s physical and mental health within a patriarchal framework that is different, but not unaligned to the feudal 20th century Japan of Kusama’s childhood. The confined subject of that work suffers a "temporary nervous depression [and] slight hysterical tendency”, descending into irrationality and psychosis via her intrigue with the pattern and colour of the wallpaper in her domestic prison. She imagines creeping women behind the wallpaper’s “breakneck” pattern that mutates in the moonlight and has “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin”.
If this consideration is applied to the loops and whorls of Kusama’s canvasses, and the covering of surfaces (walls, floors, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with her ubiquitous polka dot motifs, I'm Here, but Nothing, 2000–2008, and white phallic protrusions, SexObsession, 1965, we can reflect on the hallucinatory and psychologically dislocated origins of her creative vision. Like the never-ending pattern of the wallpaper, Kusama’s series of Mirror/Infinity rooms install mirrored and bevelled glass with neon-coloured spheres creating the mesmeric illusion of a kinetic light-enhanced space of crazy, transcendent infinity.
If then, as Graves asserts, pattern is close to dreams, nightmares, fantasies, creating what she calls a “ferocious visual excitement” that can be dangerous sfifa, a Moroccan needlework made of braided yarn. Valerie applied it to linens and fashion accessories.
Pompoms, now her signature trimming, were inspired by the Mendil, a striped square cloth women wear round their hips in Northern Morocco: “I scoured the Rif Mountains for vintage pieces to get an overview of the technique but my reinterpretation was closer to my taste and minimalist in design. My first linens with pompoms were produced near Tangier, because 17 years ago this specific craft wasn’t available in Marrakech”.
She also patiently revived intricate Fez embroidery: “It took three years to achieve the collection. I met with women who had retained this embroidery skill then we trained more workers. Dowry chest were traditionally embroidered with this double-sided technique, but the art slowly vanished with the
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A VO I C E I N THE D E S E R T
Studying al-Sadu textiles, Dr Keireine Canavan discovers patterns full of messages and meaning
Today translating a text can be done at the touch of a button; but, as the linguistic contortions generated by Google Translate prove, computer software can only take us part of the way. There’s more to understanding a living language than merely deciphering a lexicon or dictionary of words and definitions.
Conventional literary translations involve studying a text and converting the script, word for word, from one language to another. With additional adaptations to incorporate linguistic rules and traditions of the host language, a final draft embraces the translation of the ‘voice’ of the original script: these texts are valuable, but second-hand. True translation must articulate what lies behind the original script, before it is written.
Linguist Noam Chomsky discusses language systems and dialects where the principles are absorbed from the environment and not taught. These special language systems convey decoded meanings to create lines of communication and expressions of intellect, and include the language of signs and symbols. In tribal weavings, the wealth of cultural innovation and creative invention has led to a variety of special language systems and semiotic codes that evoke a rich form of personal expression and communication, with a complex emotional response.
A number of endangered tribal weaving techniques have been studied from around the world, to understand and document the oral history of the unwritten lexicon of patterns, symbols and motifs. The chosen semiotic codes, and the weaver’s translation of them, represent an expressive visual narrative and
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“because it does not know where to stop”, then the endless narcissistic repetition of dazzling mirrored cubes that Kusama used to construct Passing Winter (2005) is as dark as it is light. And if we consider the dark edges of the (un)conscious and of personal history that drive Kusama’s art with increasing speed towards death, then the growing intensity and ferocity of the patterning – more recently manifesting in complex optical figurations on giant pumpkin motifs and sculptures – point towards the ultimate self-image, that of obliteration by pattern, going on and on and on…
Arguably, this ecstatic, and suicidal, climax was achieved in 2009, when Kusama designed a handbag-shaped cell phone entitled HandbagforSpace Travel,MyDoggieRing-Ring, a pink dotted phone in accompanying dog-shaped holder, and a red and white dotted phone inside a mirrored, dotted box dubbed DotsObsession,FullHappinessWithDots. Conspicuously consumed within her own death drive, pattern-monger Kusama’s infinite and universal appeal was sealed in Trebuchet magazine’s reference to her 2012 Tate Modern exhibition, where encountering her work was deemed “akin to being suspended in a beautiful cosmos gazing at infinite worlds, or like a tiny dot of fluorescent plankton in an ocean of glowing microscopic life.” Yayoi Kusama’s work is the subject of three international exhibitions. Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed, a solo exhibition, will tour in 2015 to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, Kaohsiung, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung and National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. www.yayoikusama.jp
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Kusama In her room with "Yellow Tree" YAYOI KUSAMA Furniture by graf
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introduction of printed fabrics and sewing machines. Ironically, I recently found out the Kasuti embroidery of Karnataka in India is similar to Fez embroidery.” She went back to India in 2002 for her linens and experimented with block printing for the first time in Jaipur: “This sophisticated craft requires highly skilled artisans, it’s truly the haute-couture of prints.”
Since calicoes were introduced to Europe in the 17th century, Indian fabrics have been highly coveted and swiftly adapted to suit Western markets. In the 1640s the powerful East India Company, seeking to expand the textile trade, asked Indian craftsmen to set the red or blue designs against white grounds, since traditional red grounds were deemed too dark for the European market. In the 1660s, they dispatched patterns and dyers and weavers to teach Indian workmen how to produce textiles to fit English taste. The tree of life, birds and floral patterns were the most popular designs for palampores, reflecting European aesthetics and the overlapping of Indian, Chinese and European motifs. In the 18th century, with the development of dyeing and textile printing techniques, Indiennes and Chintz were finally produced in Europe where manufacturers could quickly respond to market trends. Centuries later little has changed.
Today, government programs and NGOs support India’s craft production but Indian artisans are rarely included in the design process; they are merely used for their skills. Typically, NGOs representatives act as intermediaries with Western designers or design studios and craftspeople who live in rural areas hardly get the chance to meet designers. Valerie’s golden rule is to meet the craftsmen, so she may fine-tune a specific idea in her creative process: “I deeply value artisan skills. When I design something, I 4
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an interpretation of her culture and social history.
Since 2003 Keireine Canavan has studied the nomadic Bedouin tribal weaving form of al-Sadu, and worked alongside master weavers, mainly in Kuwait. Al-Sadu textiles, woven on simple ground looms, enabled and sustained the traditional nomadic desert lifestyle, providing large woven tents of goat hair (beit al-sha’ar), curtains (gata), rugs, cushions, camel bags (khurj) and camel trappings (hawdaj) made from sheep’s fleece, cotton and camel hair. But the practice of al-Sadu is also rhythmically linked to memory, poetry, the weaving process itself and the extension of the weaver’s hand, and even the graceful pace of a camel.
As material culture, these textiles transmitted the Bedouin women’s stories via a series of simple woven dots, stripes and triangles, conveying their heritage and instinctive awareness of aesthetics. More complex patterns hold descriptions of the nomadic lifestyle; the expanse of the desert environment without formal borders, the cyclical seasons’ migrations, and the emphasis on symmetry and balance. Representations of the desert environment, and possessions including tents and cooking utensils, the camel and horses, were of prime importance and were transcribed as textile symbols and motifs. Hair combs (misht) and scissors (magas) that are important and vital for survival in the desert are highly prized, and consequently earn their respected place within the women’s repertoire of her special language system of symbols. Brandings, known as ‘wasm’, represented Bedouin tribal ownership of animals and water-wells, and were 4
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60 DYEING TO MEET YOU The ideas behind Katherine May’s interactive indigo installations Photography by Kristin Perers, written by Beth Smith 72 CREATIVE CONSULTANT Valerie Barkowski skillfully avoids craft clichés Written by Anne Laure Camilleri
COHABIT stunning interiors beautifully photographed 48 TIGER LADY Gabrielle Soyer rises to the challenges of reviving chain stitch Written by Jessica Hemmings and photographed by Gökalp Hamurcu
WIN 83 PRIZES THIS ISSUE A chance to win a hand embroidered cushion by LINDEL & CO, one of two copies of Etro by Renata Molho, two tickets to a ‘Salon’ of your choice at London’s 40 Winks boutique hotel.
INFORM the latest news, reviews and exhibition listings
03 BIAS /CONTRIBUTORS A letter from the founder and comments from our contributors 06 EVENTS The Selvedge Spring Fair: Bath 28 March, London 25 April, Stroud 16 May 07 NEWS Hatched, Matched Dispatched & Patched, SIT, Thea Porter, Magnificent Obsessions, Woman Pattern Power, 40 Winks, Pattern Books 09 NEED TO KNOW Beadwork 80 SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS This issue every new subscriber and renewal will receive a Margo
Selby Lavender Bag worth £19 82 BACK ISSUES Complete your collection while you still can! Many issues are now sold out or have limited stock 84 LISTINGS Exhibitions, fairs and events taking place around the world in April and May 86 READ Liberty Style, Martin Wood, reviewed by Jane Audas Embroidery Designs for Fashion and Furnishings, Moira Thunder reviewed by Susan Kay-Williams Strange Materials: Storytelling through Textiles, Leanne Prain reviewed by Arianne E Funk Printed Textiles: British and American Cottons and Linens 1700-1850, Linda Eaton reviewed by Arianne E Funk 88 VIEW Whitworth Art Gallery, Jennifer Harris, George Washington University Museum. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Beth Smith, Susie Mac Murray Cloud, Catherine Harper: Zero Squared, Marie O’Mahony 95 COMING NEXT The Ageless Issue: Textiles that time cannot wither nor custom stale
SELVEDGE ('selnid3 ) n. 1. finished di fferently 2. the non-fraying edge of a length of woven fabric. [: from SELF + EDGE]
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