“Art that creates an esthetic environment”
How does fiber recreate modern life?
The 3rd Ukrainian Textile Art Triennial, which was held for over a month in Kyiv’s Artist’s House, came to an end on January 30. The organizers had to prolong the exhibition for a week due to the large number of visitors. “Deep and genuine textile, its color and warmth, attracts people who need something positive, especially in these times. That is why our exhibits always gather a lot of visitors,” says the triennial co-organizer and member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine Tamila Pecheniuk.
The idea of the Textile Art Triennial occurred because of a desire to promote this art, which has millennial traditions in Ukraine. Whereas Ukrainian artists perfectly fit into the global context of the textile art development, not everyone in Ukraine considers it a fine art. Yet textile is rooted in the deepest layers of our psyche, and the fiber, the shirt and the towel have always been for Ukrainians not only elements of their everyday life, but also symbols.
By the way, the concept of the 3rd Ukrainian Triennial “Feeling the Time. The Needlework Renaissance” also follows international trends. Nowadays needlework prevails in global art, and especially in textile art.
“Textile art has been penetrating modern art more and more. Famous international and Ukrainian artists working in contemporary art styles often use methods of textile expression, such as braiding,” says Pecheniuk. “Textile art is the recreation of something with deep meaning. Ten years ago it wasn’t considered a fine art. Today, just as at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a lot of people are against the division of art into high and low — there is only art that creates an esthetic environment for people. Textile creates such an esthetic environment. At the same time, today the interpretation of art traditions has changed. It stopped being just a repetition of something that existed earlier, a desire to keep objects from the past. Tradition addresses deeper meaning, the fundamental principles of art. The thread, the fiber, is fundamental. Using fibers or threads, a picture of modern life can be created.”
The ideas and creativity present in every exhibit uplifts textile art above applied art. One of the participants of the 3rd Ukrainian Textile Art Triennial and author of A Towel for Andy Warhol, the Leopolitan artist Oksana Borysova spoke about the content of her works:
“Working on A Towel…, I deliberately used The Day’s article from the “Culture” section. In general, the word ‘culture’ dominates in my work. Andy Warhol, the genius popularizer and author of all the principles used in modern show-business, originates from Ukraine. I wanted to emphasize this. The newspaper clipping embodies the Ukrainian culture that entwines with Andy Warhol’s portrait in a specific way. As a result, the inner deformation of the portrait happens because of reality’s interference. The beginning and the end of my work are created in the traditional Ukrainian style that gave its name to A Towel… With this work I wanted to send a message to Andy Warhol in the form of modern Ukrainian art, to remind him about his origin.
“Several years ago I exhibited my work Press-aaa. It was a certain installation — a picture weaved with newspaper clippings, gradually turned into a giant bundle of newspapers. It symbolized the people’s resistance to the information invasion, to the fact that information attacks us from the first years of our life. Today I’m more worried about ecological issues. In fact, textile artists reproduce their own impressions in their works, that are sometimes manifestations, and they always can be decoded one way or another.”
