“Atlantide” Embroided tapestry
1995,
Works
The tapestry entitled TAGAR is part of the seven original gouaches
( 420x290cm. ) from “Atlantide.”
•The wools used originate from Abusson dye workshops and are coloured to exactly reproduce those of the original gouaches.
•The canvas originates from Courtray in Belgium. It is made of cotton and linen.
•It contains 312.000 stitches per square meter. The total number of stitches amount to close to 4 million. it took three years before it was completed in 1991.
It was realized in the workshop of the Moroccan Association of Agricultural Application and formation AMAAF which was run by Ms. Élisabeth Desveaux . ” It is all hand crafted in the Aubusson tradition( 16th century) which unfortunately no longer exists in France due to the time and the cost of such a production.
It is an Atlantis, where continents fragmented by powerful tremors have ga- thered; ancient civilisations such as Pompei or those depicted on Etruscan frescoes… Such colors, taken from a mineral or vegetal palette, are familiar throughout the history of painting.
Drifting on waters or deserts, these fragments, symbolizing amnesia, oblivion, threatened by erosion and incessant movement, only survive in a precarious balance on the edge of annihilation.
We live in an age of simultaneity, an age of juxtaposition and dispersion. I believe that the world today experiences itself less as a vast life capable of de- velopement through time, than as a network linking points while intertwining (itself) in its own skein.
And perhaps, too, we live in a space too haunted by fantaisies: the space of our basic perception, the space of our day dreams and passions all possess their in- trinsic qualities, whether light and ethereal and transparent, or dark, rocky and cluttered; lofty, muddy or like running water, or fixed-frozen as stone or crystal.
This space where we live, in which occurs the erosion of our lives, our times and our history is also, as it gnaws at us and furrows within us, its own hete- rogeneous space.
Translated by Sarah Gaddis.
