When we think about tufted designs, our mind immediately conjures up super-soft decorative rugs and tapestries maybe characterised by abstract motifs and by a special tactile quality about them. Yet, while Sam Druant's tufted tapestries are definitely soft, the themes they tackle are extremely profound. This year she created, for example, a tapestry entitled "A Walk in the Park".
Now if you look at it on your computer screen and you can just see the top part of the image with tree branches reaching out and touching each other with the moon in the background, you may think this is just a tapestry about a nocturnal walk in a park.
But, scroll down, and you will discover something deeply disturbing, a pair of legs in high heeled boots and a pool of blood. The walk in the park suddenly turns into a reference to femicides and women killed in parks by strangers who seems to be seldomly caught.
Druant has a background in illustration and combines it with various textile techniques, such as tufting, weaving, knitting and embroidery, to explore gender roles in Western culture and the sexism confronted by women on a daily basis, offering in this way a feminist critique.
One of the most recent piece she made is the "Bite Me" carpet - the design won her the Henry van de Velde Award in the Crafts category.
The "Bite Me" carpet combines textiles, artisanal work and soft materials. In the tapestry Druant includes Biblical references, myths and fairy tales, filtering them through the obsessions, passions and language of our contemporary society.
The slogans "Fuk U & UR White Horse", "Bite Me Bitch" and "Winner Winner, Pay 4 Dinner" in the tapestry invite viewers to start a conversation about how women are perceived, about the male gaze and binary hierarchical oppositions.
The textile medium to tackle such a theme is an obvious choice as crafts have been traditionally and historically considered as women's pastimes. Yet Druant mainly focuses on tufting and to make her pieces she uses a tool - a tufting gun - that you hold like a real machine gun.
Through this physical juxtaposition and through her tapestries, Druant explores the contradictions of our modern society, wondering why they still exist. There's also a sustainable twist to her work as the textile artist tries to get her materials from second-hand shops or from the deadstock of textile manufacturers.
Druant is one of the three winners of the Crafts category, but we will find out who will be taking home the Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards per category during the presentation of the Henry van de Velde Awards on 8th February at Bozar, in Brussels, Belgium.
In the meantime, we can all help determine which entry wins the Public Gold Award by voting online at henryvandevelde.be from today till 23rd December 2021.
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