Efrati identified a blend of influences in Schor’s tapestry: motifs from Romanian folklore, drawing on ancient material culture and folk craft traditions; themes from the unique nature and geography of Romania; and a modern, universal idiom. The exhibition is the result of a long internal and external process, in which Efrati created a network of connections and contexts related to deciphering and restoring the textile material’s origins and properties, by tracing traditional techniques of spinning, weaving, natural dyeing, and landscape painting. This extensive web links Schor’s work with that of Efrati.
For over a decade, Efrati has been dividing her life between Tel Aviv and a village in Umbria, Italy, where she runs an ecological farm with her family after many and intensive years in which she ran a fashion design studio and workshop in Israel.
From Ilana Efrati’s work log:
Textiles
My interest in fabrics and textiles led me in the 1980s – before my fashion design career developed – to study weaving as part of a self-study track. Textiles have been part of my family tradition, which has its roots in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on the Silk Road.
Color
During my research, disassembly was required in order to reach the base – which led to examining the yarn itself, before the weaving phase. The colors in Diana Schor’s rug are based on a natural palette. The natural landscape of Mediterranean woodland, and the garden I planted around the farm’s historic structure, are constantly changing and serve as ongoing objects of observation and repeated documentation, with particular focus on the discoveries of the pigments that are hidden in the body of tubers, fruits, flowers, and leaves in the changing seasons.
Weaves
I created the weave directly, in plain and simple fashion – without a loom or frame, by pinning pins on a board and stretching the threads between them. The size of the squares is derived from the scale of Diana Schor’s tapestry, reduced by a factor of 900:1. It is a meditative and intuitive action, with the hand leading the thought, and the material leading the eye.
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