Woven Hug 2.0 (or ‘Abrazo Entramado’), is a participatory textile installation seeking to embrace Portstewart with a pair of textile arms filled with scrap material and covered in designs and fabric embroidered by members of the local community.
The project facilitated by Tere Chad & Cordelia Rizzo was inspired by the resourcefulness and artistry of Chilean arpilleras from the Conflict Textiles collection, which tell stories of political resistance with repurposed scraps and burlap bags.
The project invites us to reconnect with each other after years of suffering a pandemic and economic crises.
A first edition of Woven Hug happened in March 2022 at LABNL, Laboratorio Cultural Ciudadano (Cultural Lab) belonging to CONARTE (Arts Council of Nuevo León State) in Monterrey, Mexico.
A volume of over 2 cbm of pieces of fabrics were recycled by Northern Ireland’s community attending Flowerfield Arts Centre, R-Space Gallery, Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, to facilitate 3 weeks of embroidery and stitching workshops (2023) at Flowerfield Arts Centre, VAST (Victims & Survivors Trust, Belfast) and R-Space Gallery. A group of nearly 200 participants donated over 120 embroideries to stitch to the 20 metre long Woven Hug.
The participatory textile installation will hug the façade of Flowerfield Arts Centre to welcome its visitors until the end of August (weather permitting).
The workshops for the piece addressed themes like Northern Ireland society post-Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland’s textile heritage, women’s historical role in society, and the region’s beautiful landscapes, as well as the impact of climate change upon them. The activities counted special guests like Dr. Cliff Henry (National Trust), Alison Gault (Ulster University), Roberta Bacic (Conflict Textiles), Dr. Fiona Clark (Queen’s University Belfast) and Can Can Coleraine amongst others. This project was also made in partnership with the Linen Biennale.
This piece & associated kindness story is from Tere Chad & Cordelia Rizzo – go & check out their other work and support small, independent artists. This post is in collaboration with Art Can.
