Curators: Efi Gen, Vera Pilpul, Keren Weisshaus.

“In the beginning everything was made of textile. People lived in tents, babies were born in textiles, people were buried in textiles, textile was an inseparable part of our lives. Now, it is reintegrating and I believe that it is the material of the twenty-first century and that architecture, transportation, bridges, health, art, design and fashion – everything will be made of textiles of all kinds.”

Over the past two years, we have experienced a dissonance between shutting in and stepping out of lockdowns, between having to wrap ourselves, defending ourselves against the threat of an epidemic, and longing for a soft and comforting touch, an exodus to nature. Textile is essentially a material that envelops and protects the body, creating a buffer between it and the environment. As such, it is a wonderful agent for representing the longings and dilemmas we have all been facing. The textile, for its colors, patterns and textures, simulates and corresponds with nature and its many representations; The flora and fauna, animal skin, vegetation, natural landscapes – all serve as a basis for inspiration, imitation, model creation, decoration, camouflage and also as a source of power and great influence for creators, designers and artists.

The group exhibition, featuring works by 18 artists, aims to offer a position that addresses the tension, as well as the connection between representations of nature and textile, as perceived by them and the way they pour and encode the world of their personal, social images, metaphors and symbolism. The viewer is given the opportunity to examine the image of nature that emerged from this process of research and distillation. Some of the artists used traditional textile techniques (sewing, embroidery, knitting, etc.), producing simulations of nature that illustrate the space between nature and man-made artifacts. Others utilized the techniques and practices of textile and transferred them to other material worlds (e.g. to lace made of paper, to embroidery in porcelain, or to a rug made of adhesive paper). The works of Maria Merfeld, Amalia Frank, Bianca Severijns, Lida Sharet Masad and Dalia Fisch Benari use a material that replaces the textile while also attempting to resemble it, using a laborious handicraft practice that produces multiplicity, if not
excess. In the case of Yuval Etzioni, Ilana Efrati, Gali Cnaani and Ella Amitay Sadovsky, textiles are actually used in the works, but go beyond their function. In Ilana Efrati’s work it is used as a substrate for actions that accelerate the processes of nature, Yuval Etzioni uses pieces of synthetic grass represented by carpet parts, creating vistas of agricultural fields. For Ella Amitai Sadovsky, the textile produces the landscape and even the domesticated nature, as Gali Canaani deals with fiber and the basic components of textile and weaving. the textile is joined by embroidery as a
central practice, and the personal and distinct handwriting of the artist becomes as clear as day in the works of Bracha Guy and Itamar Sagi. Using wool, Anna Milman created a world that is simultaneously a warm blanket and an up-to-date landscape image of natural and industrialized realms. Andi Arnovitz uses textiles to create a socio-critical statement about ‘cover’ within a gender context. Tal Shochat deals extensively with a dialectical space between the outside and the inside, between nature and the artificial. She detaches a carpet full of ornamentation from its natural location and turns it into the backdrop of a pomegranate-laden tree. In doing so, she creates a dreamy and sublime space, with meticulous aesthetics and abundant beauty. Nadia Adina Rose poetically uses the soft and homely properties of the textile to reach into an external natural landscape that is linked to personal experiences. Noga Yudkovik Etzioni presents a threatening nature through the creation of ‘second skin’ in fabric. The works of Arie Berkowitz and Rotem Finzi as well as the works of Ella Amitay Sadovsky connect and deal with the meanings, material and physical closeness between humans and animals, woven through these fabrics, telling a narrative that is perhaps a wish, a longing for an imminent, symbolic, emotional connection.

The exhibition presents artistic metamorphoses inspired by the beauty and seduction of nature, through techniques of sewing, embroidery, knitting, weaving as well as new materials that turn textile into a representational, symbolic and researchable site. Is it a pastoral nature? Does it pose a threat, or is it moments before extinction? Is there a romanticization left in the process and in the image itself? or is the textile getting an extreme, colorful, laborious expression, and perhaps nature is free of all these and has withered.