Press Release:
Contact; John Amato October 17, 2010
Opening Wednesday December 1, 2010 and running through Saturday January 8, 2011 is an exhibition of both aesthetic attention and political significance. The art of Moroccan weaving is one known far and wide, in both the context of a culture driven by spiritual meditation and the mentality of a people for whom perseverance is a circumstantial human condition no subject to denial. Who are the weavers today in this mystical North African artistic climate? Women.
Alia Kate and Anna Beeke collaborate in the curatorial and photographic documentation of the project. Ms Kate has been collecting woven works for the past five years in a supportive role of the women who labor throughout various regions of Morocco. Ms Beeke joins as a documentarian whose eye integrates seamlessly from journalist to aesthete. The exhibition addresses the quality of the craft, the life force that drives the motif and rendering of tradition and the politics of circumstance as a people, women in this case, stand tall in the act of living by their art. There are 12 woven pieces that exemplify the process as identified in Anna Beeke’s compassionate eye.
In Morocco, where men are responsible for most of their country’s artisanal production, women have maintained the age-old craft of indigenous weaving. Until recently these rural Moroccan women have remained all but invisible behind the warp threads of their looms, single-handedly passing down the weaving tradition from grandmothers, to mothers, to daughters. In this way designs, colors, and patterns are guarded and preserved like family heirlooms, within each family, each town, and each region.
This project, Untangling Threads: Women Artisans in Morocco's Rug Weaving Industry, offers the viewer a glimpse into rural Moroccan life as it documents the life, culture, and craft of female weavers, while specifically focusing on artisans from rural weaving communities in the Middle and High Atlas mountains.
Most of these artisans do not know how to read or write and many have never left their villages. However, they are nonetheless equipped with the innate artistic ability that allows them to produce beautifully woven masterpieces.
Whether they weave a 3’x5’ rug or a piece that is three times that size, or whether one woman weaves the rug, or five women weave simultaneously on the same rug, the result is the same. They sit side-by-side, rub their shoulders together, share a bond of family, lifestyle, village life, womanhood, while weaving in silence—determined, focused, and steady. With no designs to follow or guides to tell them what to do next, they work from memory and from an intimate knowledge of the craft.
In the photographs you see confident Amazigh Moroccan women who defy the stereotypes painted by the Western media. In the rugs you discover the dexterity of the weavers’ fingers, the boundaries of their imagination, and the antiquity of their craft. With this Untangling Threads reveals the faces and the hands behind the handicraft of weaving in Morocco.
Synchronicity has been showing artists for 22 years and is proud to close out the spring season with such a bold and inspired young artist. It has been our mission to inspire the public perceptions of art with credibility and hope. Alia Kate and Anna Beeke are a testament to that mission and its presence in the world of exhibition and human sensuality.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday; 1:00PM to 7:00PM (or by appointment)
