Up until a few years ago fabrics were mainly considered as the main medium of expression of proper textile artists. In the last few years, though, things changed and now it is not rare to see a piece made with textiles or incorporating some fabrics made by artists who usually work with other materials.
Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz often uses textiles as her principal artistic medium to create installations that she calls “Crowds” and that feature several sculptures mainly made with burlap and depicting figures in a crowd.
Abakanowicz's installations vary in the number of figures and in the way they are depicted, sometimes they stand, walk, or sit. Shown in various installations and configurations all around the world, Abakanowicz's "Crowds" can be considered as tackling several existential issues linked with the human condition. The installations are also usually placed on the same level of the visitors, so that the inanimate sculptures mix in an uncanny way with real crowds, creating a rather unusual human choreography, a dichotomic game of two entities - humans and statues.
One of these installations will be on view during the event "Crowd and Individual" dedicated to Abakanowicz's works and organised at the Fondazione Cini on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.
Humble burlap, a fabric characterised by a corse consistency, has usually got different applications in various industries and works pretty well in Abakanowicz's pieces.
While it provides the proper structure to the figures, it also gives the artist the chance to reference and explore several symbolic meanings. Thanks to its breathability and durability, burlap was traditionally used to make sacks and bags and also ship goods (think about coffee beans or tobacco), but it is also linked with the mortification of the flesh, since it has a corse consistency. In Abakanowicz's installations it therefore becomes a metaphor, a symbol of endurance, of persevering in adversity or withstanding hardship and stress and of doing so in a rather passive way.
"Maybe the experience of the crowd, which waits passively in line, but is ready to trample, destroy, or adore on command, like a headless creature, has become the focus of my research. What may also have attracted me to the theme was my fascination with the scale of the human body, or a desire to determine how little is needed to express the whole," Magdalena Abakanowicz stated about her interest in the theme of crowds in a press release about the event.
Magdalena Abakanowicz: Crowd and Individual, Fondazione Cini, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 12th April - 2nd August 2015.
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