photo Beatrijs Sterk
Artapestry 7 at the German Textile Museum Krefeld
from July 21 till December 31, 2024
For the first time, the start of the now 7th Artapestry, the triennial of the European Tapestry Forum, took place in Germany. The first Artapestry was also shown in the Textilmuseum Krefeld in 2005, but as one of four international exhibition venues that always take place at this event.
The opening was ceremonial, with speeches from Thomas Cronenberg (Steering Committee European Tapestry Forum), Anet Brusgard (Secretariat European Tapestry Forum) and Dr. Isa Fleischmann from the German Textile Museum, among others. Unfortunately, this interesting contribution by Dr. Fleischmann was given in German, which hardly any of the foreigners understood. A translation on paper would have been welcome.
The artists had once again traveled long distances to be able to be at the Textile Museum in Krefeld on Sunday morning, July 20th at 11 a.m. This time, not only artists from the Nordic countries and Western European countries such as France, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain were represented, but fortunately there were also works from Eastern European countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.
Over half of the artists were well known to me, and I had even seen one of the works in another exhibition. But most of the works were new and not shown earlier, which is an achievement considering that this exhibition takes place every three years and most of the works are quite large and labor-intensive.
The jury consists of the winner of the previous exhibition, this time the artist Livia Papai from Budapest, Prof. Clio Padovani, Fashion and Textile Department Winchester School of Art and Dr. Isa Fleischmann, German Textile Museum.
It is a good habit to show not only classic hand-made tapestries, but also the latest developments in jacquard weaving and other new techniques. Two large jacquard works designed by Margret Eichner from Germany were selected by the jury this time. They consisted of digital collages that were then machine-woven in a weaving mill using the jacquard technique. It was a shame that it was not mentioned where the tapestries were woven. I do not especially like this type of historicizing collage, but the jacquard weaver was a master of his craft. There could not be a greater difference in mentality between this work and the other handweavers, between the slow weaving process and the reproducable large Jacquard tapestries!
Other deviations from the “covered warp” technique were, for example, the double weave by Søren Krag/DK/N, the partially open warp (in the works of Tonje Høydahl Sørli /N and Ieva Prane/Latvia), the weaving technique showing warp and weft in the work of the prize winner Feliksas Jakubauskas /Lithuania, whereby the jury highlighted that he combines the traditional Lithuanian twill weaving technique with the classical tapestry weaving in his abstract compositions.
I particularly liked the works of Aino Kajaniemi/FIN and the work of Irina Kolesnikova/D, both of whom also handle the weaving technique very freely. I also liked many other works such as those by Marie-Thumette Brichard/F, Lise Frølund/DK, Anet Brusgaard/DK, Lija Rage/LV, Brita Been/DK, Anna Olsson/S, Aleksandra Parol/PL and of course the works by this year’s prize winner Feliksas Jakubauskas/LT.
But it is not right to name just a few because most of the works were excellent, both in terms of technique and design. This exhibition gave a good overview of what European tapestry is all about today! The jury met for three days to discuss the works, which is not always the case at international exhibitions. The fact that the organization is carried out solely by the tapestry artists themselves is an achievement that cannot be valued highly enough. This is mainly thanks to Anet Brusgaard from the secretariat in Copenhagen and the “Steering Committee” from 7 European countries.
Unfortunately, we are currently living under war conditions in Europe, which meant that any possible Russian contributions were missing, a country that also has a large number of excellent tapestry artists.
This exhibition will also be shown in :
The Art Centre Silkeborg in Denmark, from25.1. till 21.4.2025
The Janina Monkute -Marks Museum-Gallery in Lithania, from 5.9 till 31.12.2025
The Szombathely Gallery in Szombathely Hungary, from 29.1. till 28.2.2026
