This exhibition is the continuation of the Museum’s interest in preserving technologies related to traditional textiles and their impact on the works of contemporary artists. In 2019, the Textile Museum organized the exhibition Wool and Water. Wool and Water. Woven Felted Blankets of the Balkan-Carpathian Region, which presented the ancestral technologies used for the woven and felted blankets, the same technologies being used for Cantor’s works, exhibited here. The works in this exhibition were made in collaboration with a loom weaver from Săpânța, Maramureş in the summer of 2020.
One can notice Mircea Cantor’s interest in traditional textile art and Maramureşian savoir faire which has an older history, starting in 2008 when he made a “flying” wool carpet — “Airplanes and angels” — also in Maramureş, in Botiza, with the weaver Victoria Berbecaru, and other women from the village; also in 2008 he collaborated with the sculptor Vasile Bârsan for the work “Arch Of Trumph” — a reinterpreted Maramureșian gate; and at that time he collaborated with Burnar Tănase, the pottery artisan from Săcel, for a series of jugs specially conceived for an installation/performance. For Cantor, “the artist’s hand is the most important tool,” as it transmits ancestral knowledge and a way of life. Hence the title of the works “Hands are adjectives to numbers” which will be premiered in Romania after being part of the Kathmandu Triennial in Nepal in 2022. These cerga (blankets) were woven traditionally by looms, being the result of a multifaceted collaboration with an authentic weaver. On their surface you can see woven in black and white colors, a code that changes on each piece (each cerga/blanket). This number is a reflection of a counter of world statistics in relation to the population of Romania, a population that has decreased significantly over the years due to international migration to Western nations. Cantor’s collaboration with artisan weavers, who were very open to experimentation, dispelled the rigid idea that traditions reject or are refractory to changes.
The exhibition is on view until June 17, 2023
