Press Release in English: The Weaving Process: from Sketching to Weaving EN

Press Release in Romanian: The Weaving Process: from Sketching to Weaving RO

Ivan Gallery is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition The Weaving Process: from Sketching to Weaving, on Saturday, November 9th, which will take place in the new space adjacent to the gallery, that has an experimental profile focused on art projects. The exhibition brings together the works of ten students from the first and second year of the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree courses in Textile Arts and Textile Design at the National University of Art, Bucharest, namely Andreea Stănilă, Claudia-Maria Davidescu, Delia Bratanof, Elena Dumitrescu, Elena Iancu, Ioana Macovei Ciuciulica, Iris Tudorache, Maria Dinu, Maria Mihai and Toma Tudorică. The project is coordinated by the artist Iulia Toma, who selected the works and developed the exhibition concept.

Iulia Toma is an artist who works with textile media in various ways, such as textile collage, sewn drawing and mixed media installations. She uses fragments of clothing, accessories and carpets as textile sources for her works. Her interest is in the expansion of the conventional boundaries of the textile medium through the exploration of social issues such as feminism, women’s rights and social justice. Iulia Toma is also a lecturer at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where she is involved in pedagogical and artistic activities.

As a university lecturer, Iulia Toma proposed the theme of the body to her students. The starting point for each creation was a sketch, which later developed into textile works, fabric and tapestries depicting the female silhouette, realized in various techniques such as printing and weaving. The textile thread developed the original idea, while maintaining the plasticity of the drawing.

The textile works of the first-year bachelor’s students are grouped together in order to highlight the individual approaches of each of them. In the case of Claudia-Maria Davidescu, the theme of the human body also became the subject of her dissertation- Unfolding my skin, coordinated by Dorina Horătău. This three-part work explores her relationship with her own body. The textile works are joined by a video made by Ioana Macovei Ciuciulica in her second year of bachelor’s studies, entitled Expendable Bodies Use & No Abuse. In this video, the human body turned machine comes into direct contact with the textile thread.

The Weaving Process: from Sketching to Weaving, traces how students from different generations address the same theme, going through the same process of developing their work. The sketch is the starting point for each student, and the result is a wide diversity of creations. In some instances, the human body is only suggested, appearing as an outline of the flexible textile thread, while other approaches aim to elaborate the silhouette. This exercise established a step-by-step working process that encouraged creativity, all starting from a permissive but well-established theme.

The exhibition is organized in collaboration with UnArte, Department of Textile Arts and Textile Design.