I am spending some time in Paris this month and visited the Palais de Tokyo yesterday. They had some exhibitions right down my line with artists using fabric and embroidery.
One exhibition featured large fabric installations by artist Ulla von Brandenburg. She was trying to symbolize inside and outside spaces becoming one, using kind of large colorful sheets of fabric and tents; especially the first part really opens and draws one into the rooms. It intrigued you to walk inside these large art installations becoming part of them.
The other exhibition entitled “The World is burning” makes you think of the present world we are living in today. Many various artists, most with Middle Eastern or North African backgrounds had contributed to this exhibition, focusing on the dark and light sides of our world in peace or in conflict, and on the environmental damages we submit to the earth - you walk out of this exhibition with a renewed feeling that we all need to do just a little bit better than at present if we want to go in the right direction for our planet and its people.
Several video installations are really informative and interesting (do look up Amal Kenawy & John Akomfrah). Two other artists caught my attention as I really liked their means to express themselves. First, Bady Dalloul who has drawn tiny stories about life in Syria. These drawings were all mounted in matchboxes so you had to look really up close to see these pictures, some gruesome, some kind of everyday life. Amazing which large impression drawing in tiny matchboxes can give.
The second artist, Mounira Al Solh, used one of my favorite mediums, embroidery, to tell her story. She has collected stories of personal experiences from people of the crises in Syria and the Middle East. While interviewing them she also made a drawing of them and some of these drawings she has then following been embroidering and framing in colourful fabric. Somehow they get more powerful when added to fabric rather than on a simple piece of note paper.
“The World is burning” is a really interesting and powerful exhibition, which I can recommend you to visit, either in Paris or where ever it might go after this city.
