Textile Landscapes. The Knots and Patterns Exhibition

Textile Landscapes – an exhibition of the international project Knots & Patterns

What does fabric say about a region? How to tell the story of tradition recorded in the weave of fibres, embroidery motifs, patterns and weaving techniques passed down from generation to generation? On June 26th at 6:00 PM, the Ethnography Department of the National Museum in Gdańsk will open an exhibition presenting the results of three artistic and research residencies of young artists working with textile art. The exhibition offers a look at the tradition of creating and decorating fabrics from three different, yet closely related regions of Europe: Epirus in Greece, Gorenjska in Slovenia, and Pomerania in Poland. Each of them reveals a different history of textile heritage and artistic sensibility.

The exhibition will feature textile works, audiovisual installations created during the residencies, as well as a digital archive documenting the creative process and local heritage. “Textile Landscapes” shows fabric not only as a material, but also as a medium of memory, identity, and knowledge. It is a story about how tradition can endure through continuity, but also through change and reinterpretation of the past. It is also a study of relationships, cooperation, and sensory experiences.

Exploring textile traditions through the senses was an important experience of the Polish residency. The repetitive movements during embroidery, the touch of fabric, the smell of wool, and the whirring of the spinning wheel became a key inspiration for the artists from Pomerania. In Greek Epirus, artists looked at local textile heritage through the prism of ecofeminism, focusing on practices of communal learning and methods of maintaining weaving traditions through generations. In Slovenian Gorenjska, where the textile industry rapidly declined, artists emphasized the significance of textile heritage as a carrier of collective memory, especially the experiences of workers and the history of industry, which are insufficiently represented in historical research.