Inspired by Jaime Hayon

Impression of the exhibition Figuratism by Katrin Münzberg, Intern in the Textiellab

Tiptop dressed up and tightly laced two white masks welcome us at the Figurativism, the new exhibition at the TextielMuseum. The delicately woven and embroidered heads of Jaime Hayon look like inspectors with sparkling eyes.

They guide us to the left, where a serie of silk-screen prints from 1950- 70 mainly plays with color combinations and overlapping motives. The intersections create new motives and built up the background, but sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate between the motive and its ground. I start to flip between both sides, between positive and negative motive. Questions as “Is figurativism restricted to a certain object?” and “Will those restrictions disappear?”, come into my mind.

In the next room two colorful handknotted carpets from Corneille amaze the audience. “Niet Aanraken!” is claimed, but for me it’s hard to resist. The carpet doesn’t just impress with it’s colours, it looks also damn cozy.

The younger the textiles are, the more complex they seem to get. Especially the works of Hella Jongerius and Kiki van Eijk combine different techniques and create multilayered textiles – they illustrate the work of the TextielLab. Step by step motives and ornaments get increasingly wilder. Figures are cut and paste in a new imaginative way and blur my fixed understanding of figurativism. It’s like looking into somebody else’s dreamworld.
 
Inspired by Jaime Hayon blind drawing related tapestry “Birds”, I slide into my own dream world while getting back to the internship in the Lab, traced by the dizzy eyes of the white masks.

Katrin Münzberg
Intern in the Textiellab