"Home is where your heart is" says the proverb, and this idiom perfectly fits with the lifestyle of gypsies for whom home is wherever one decides to settle down.
Settling down usually means also to have a house or a place where to stay, yet static spaces filled with furniture do not suit the nomadic life. There is instead an interior design element – the rug – that could be considered as the perfect symbol for a life on the go and as a metaphor for freedom and tradition at the same time, since it can be easily transported and used to recreate an impromptu domestic warm environment wherever you go.
Artist Stephan Hamel knows a lot about moving around: born in Bangkok in 1962, from an Austrian diplomat father and a Tuscan mother, he spent his childhood in Thailand.
His current job – he is a well-known design consultant – has taken him around the world, and throughout the years he has worked for Cerruti Baleri, Lasvit and Vibram. He has recently developed "Fontana Etruria", a group of three monumental fountains made up of the finest Carrara marble realized with Fernando and Humberto Campana.
Thinking about his own nomadic life and the life of gypsies, Hamel recently launched "Zitanpixel", a carpet exhibition at Nonostante Marras (via Cola di Rienzo 8, Milan, Italy; until 9th January 2017).
The exhibition includes a series of gyspy-style rugs that can be dated between the 1920s and the 1970s (the most recent pieces include fluorescent fibres, so they can be easily dated). The first knotted rug was apparently woven by a nomadic tribe that had abundant access to the raw materials needed, such as wool and natural colours.
The rugs tell the story of nomadic groups and in particular of the Romani, Sinti, Kale and Romanichal peoples who left India at the turn of the 11th Century and arrived in Europe in the following centuries. These people often found themselves living at the edges of society and were subjected to persecutions.
"Zitanpixel" becomes therefore a way to pay tribute to crafts, traditions, symbols, anthropological studies and nomadic people."Rugs immediately make us feel at home," states Hamel. "My love for floral rugs comes from my Russian-born paternal grandmother, who was a wandering citizen of the world, and from her passion for the thousand-year-old history of these very particular crafted pieces."
Handcrafted in sheep's wool according to ancient artisan manufacturing processes in country villages in the easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the rugs were repaired by contemporary artisans with a process similar to the Japanese art of kintsugi that ended up highlighting some of the most interesting imperfections.
The rugs were then framed with a fur border, a sort of reference to a primitive and wild style that clashes with the geometrical decorations of the carpets. These decorative motifs hint at traditional meanings of animistic, shamanic and talismanic origin that differ between clans and between peoples, but to the visitors' eyes they will look particularly modern as some of these elements call to mind the beloved pixels of our digital age.
Hamel invites visitors to consider these accidental pixellated crafts not just from a decorative point of view, but as "psychogeographical" elements with a precise function – inspire people to investigate the history of these pieces and of the artisans who made them, while pondering about themes such as memories and a life on the go.
The final message of the exhibition is particularly apt to the historical moment we are going through: we do live indeed in unstable times in which we all keep on moving and adapting to constant changes on a daily basis, while our personal histories and traditions are continuously renewed and enriched by processes of growth, development and transformation and by new collective and nomadic lifestyles.
Image credits for this post
"Zitanpixel", carpet collection conceived by Stephan Hamel, 2016. Collection of carpets made from 100% sheep wool with flower designs. Fur borders. Two sizes. Handmade. Finishings: long or short fur. Sizes: single carpet cm 200×70; double carpet cm 200×145. Photo credit: Emanuele Marzi
Related articles
