Why did a loom form the basis for the first computer? Why do so many math teachers in Peru come from weaving families? What contexts of meaning are hidden behind idioms with textile motifs?
Threads, fabrics and patterns accompany us as a matter of course in our everyday lives. All over the world, textile terms shape our use of language, our narratives and myths. The making of textiles stimulates our spatial imagination and mathematical thinking.
"The Red Thread"reflects and presents the culturally diverse techniques of textile production - drawing on collections from the Americas, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Most of the tools, fibers, fabrics, and other objects will be presented to the public for the first time: an ikat shawl from Java interwoven with silver threads, a pre-Columbian coca bag from the Andes, a cloak - a status symbol of the Maori - as well as raffia plushes from Central Africa.
In the context of the exhibition, artists and composers also devote themselves to textiles and their symbolic power, meanings, and current contexts. Young composers translate Indonesian fabrics from the collection of the Weltkulturen Museum into modern sound carpets. Two artists visualize the connection between the textile and the digital world with installations. Starting with woven baskets from the America Collection, North American women artists show the poetic connections between text and texture as well as aspects of their indigenous identity. Young people from Frankfurt produce their own film on issues of alternative textile production.
Source and more information at:
http://www.weltkulturenmuseum.de/en/exhibitions/current/7687
