TEXERE

(Textiles Education and Research in Europe)

A Textiles Education Working Group within ETN

The History of TEXERE

The Association of TEXERE resulted from the first ever European conference for people involved in Textiles Education at all levels in 1990 in Kehl, Germany. It was organised by the German association Fachverband Textilunterricht, who had invited over 600 representatives of schools and universities from all over Europe. As a result, a group of us decided to form a European textiles teaching association. After meetings in…

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REWIND: Portuguese Textile and Contemporary Art Exhibition

Portugal has a long tradition in Textiles, booth in craft and industry. In the last decades has been restructuring its industrial textile sector, by interconnecting industry hand-made crafts and design. Due to its constant use and because textiles have been understood merely as a “product to wear” often we look at textiles without a critical and aesthetic perspective.

In this context, Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE could be a forum for debate between artists, designers and the public, and could create an opportunity for the effective renewal of the concept of “textile” opening…

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Laima Oržekauskienė

1959

Lithuania

WOMEN IN THEIR FIFTIES. PYTHIAS

Oeuvre of Laima Oržekauskienė unfolds through giving carefully considered sense to ritual and attention to origins and traditions of the phenomenon which enables deeper knowledge. The artist interprets a ritual as well as implements it. She identifies herself with the ritual as she weaves millimetre by millimetre. In solitude. Week after week. Every single detail of the image she weaves is meaningful – motif, pattern, technique, material. In her artwork the artist employs rich heritage of global culture and seeks for codes that affirm feminine entity or invents them…

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For over thirty years the International Tapestry Biennials were held in the city of Lausanne, making it the world capital of contemporary textile art. The event had come into being thanks to the encounter of Pierre Pauli (1916-1970), the then director of the Decorative Arts Museum in Lausanne, with Jean Lurçat, the French painter and tapestry designer, who had instigated the revival of French tapestry after World War II. In 1959, Pierre Pauli mooted the idea of giving modern tapestry…

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CHUNGHIE LEE

South Corea

NO-NAME WOMEN. 2011. Installation

Chunghie Lee is a textile artist and writer who lectures at universities in Seoul, Korea and abroad, including Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the USA and Evtek Institute of Art & Design in Finland. She received her BFA and MFA degrees from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea and was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar at Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Here she showed the traditional bojagi (bo-ja-ki) technique which she employs for her artwork.

When Chunghie Lee set out to teach her first bojagi course outside Korea…

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REWIND-PLAY-FORWARD: COSTA RICA’S MAGICAL MEMORY

Aesthetic practices focusing on textiles, indistinctly functioning as traditional warp and weft visual structure or a mix of alternative of basic raw fibre materials, have developed strategies to make up expressive languages that diversify the possibilities of their perception within everyday art. These languages empower and distinguish ideas, maximize speeches and establish innovative visual forms that link and mix traditional forms of textile practices and also provide experimentation, using the fibre as an innovative element.…

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Playful Vision: Nuno’s Textile Imaginings

This Kaunas exhibition showcases textiles from Nuno, a remarkable Tokyo-based design and production studio led by artistic director and co-founder Reiko Sudo. Nuno (meaning “fabric” in Japanese) integrates traditional techniques and aesthetics with contemporary technologies and materials to create some of the most innovative weaving in the world. Imaginative vision is the key here: using everything from stainless steel and milk protein to bamboo and bird feathers, as well as unorthodox finishing methods like burning and chemical melting or appropriating the latest industrial processes while also fostering centuries-old craftsmanship, Nuno…

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1959

Peru

ÁXIMO LAURA, born in Peru in 1959, has woven in his father’s workshop since he was 9 years of age, attending school in part time. While studying Spanish literature, he discovered that weaving can be an expressive art form when he met Italian textile artist – Helvecia Kela Cremaschi, who had her workshop in Lima at that time. He has devoted himself to this form of expression ever since, clearly showing his Andean roots and cosmic world view. He hopes to contribute to the renewal of this rich old culture that is still…

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USA

ABOUT FACE

born in 1942, studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and received her MA in Art and Design in 1973. From 1976 to date she has worked as a Professor of Art at the California College of Arts in Oakland, USA. Lia Cook has been represented in many exhibitions, to name but a few: Lausanne Biennial (1989 and 1992), Kyoto International Textile Competition (1989 and 1992), Craft Today USA (travelling exhibition, 1992); “Design Life Now, National Design Triennial”, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, 2006; “From Lausanne to Beijing” International Fiber Art Biennial, Gold…

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EXPERIMENTS WITH LIGHT: ART LAB

The Textile Artists’ Guild organize the International satellite project of Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE’11 – EXPERIMENTS WITH LIGHT: ART LAB. The brand new Kaunas arena’ media centre will become the place for international exhibition which exhibits will be installed in the darkness and lightened by black light bulbs which spotlight luminescent details of the art pieces and thus enrich the aesthetic experiences of the visitors by mystical effects and unexpected approaches. Since 2006 several editions of Black Light exhibition, organised by the Textile Artists’ Guild, were held in Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Check…

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Keith A. Buchholz

Curator

In the time it took to organize this show, major shifts occurred – shifts in location, works to be shown, participants, activities, and ideas of what Fluxus was, is , and could be. A call for works was put out to the “Eternal Network” of Artists, Non-Artists, Poets, Flux people, and Friends to interpret the idea of Fluxus, and in doing so, honor the legacy of George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, who was born in Kaunas and emigrated with his family to the United States.

The premise…

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Monika Järg

The Kaunas Biennial TEXTILE is the audience magnet all over Europe and has set a series of visitor records. It has become a trendsetter for authors as well as the audience all over the world. The Biennial is accompanied by satellite projects in various galleries and urban space of Kaunas, the themes of which are associated to the main concept of the event. One of the invited satellite projects is the exhibition of contemporary Estonian (textile) art in Gallery Meno Parkas, curated by textile designer and artist Monika Järg, and organised…

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