Which material is the closest to us? The one that is our mostimmediate natural environment, the layer around our bodies, enveloping, covering, keeping us warm, communicating with us and affecting ourrelationships from the moment we are born and throughout our lives:textile. It makes our spaces practical, colourful, comfortable, unique andliveable. We touch it in every moment, yet we know less and less about it.
Since the time we stopped making it ourselves, we have notknown how and from what it is made. We cannot recognise its materials and structure, nor the way these determine its qualities.
The traditional structure of textile can be seen in our built environment on different scales. The richness of the natural and syntheticmaterials it is made of has created qualities that were unconceivablebefore. It is ever more sensitive, thinner, more flexible, more comfortable and smarter. Smart because it can react in a complex way, integrating new technologies not only on its surface but also in its structure.Every step of its making requires a planned act of shaping; the structures constructed using the yarn, the thread and their diverse combinations bear the possibility of an infnite variation of patterns, forms anddesigns. The textile section of this exhibition demonstrates how thepotentials of the material can be coupled with the creative spirit of themaker, lending it renewed freshness and reinventing the genre.
The pattern on textile is a meaningful visual unit. It is akin topainting and digital imaging processes, in some cases even surpassing them since the structure of the material itself ‘projects’ a patternonto the surface and this can be enriched by most varied intentionsof the artist and the responsible designer.
Textile and fashion not only mean the primary appearance ofthe material but also the spatial designs created, as visitors to this exhibition will see. The clothes and objects made from textile and defnedby functional and autonomous attributes come to life in space. Nomatter how trendy and technologically advanced they are, they alwaysperform their most fundamental and oldest function: they serve us.
Let this exhibition inspire us to discover the origin and making of different textiles and examine the spatial structures that lend both firmness and softness to the material, helping us to experience the fullness of human existence, i.e. becoming art.
Hedvig Harmati DLA
Noémi Ferenczy Award laureate textile artist