TEMPLE
Two women came into the space yesterday who I immediately sensed were Iranian. In fact one of them was and the other was Armenian, a public art consultant who has worked around these kind of projects a lot and so understood it straightaway. I showed her my press book with photos of previous work, it was a good moment of connection.
They sat down to write ribbons and the Iranian woman seemed to go blank as to what to write and almost gave up. We got onto the conversation of my mother, which always comes up when I meet Iranians as they of course want to know which of my parents is from there. In explaining the loom project. I felt moved to tell them how she died (Phuket, 2004 in the Tsunami, just after Delia was born) and how her death has influenced my work. The Iranian woman asked my mother’s name – Parvin Azadeh Rieu – wrote her ribbon in Farsi, then offered it to me as ‘to the memory of your mother, with your name next to hers’. It was all I could do not to collapse weeping in the space, it was a loaded moment of grief and realization that she is absent and would have loved this work. It is nevertheless complete and it also very much references all I got from her – the shape, form and feel of the piece have my mother’s stamp of approval, I am sure.
Weaving in that ribbon was a point of connection with her and also with everything unnameable I have lost through her passing in terms of my connection to her culture.
There has been an issue over how I identify myself in the context of this work. Although I have used textiles as part of my work for 7 years, I feel like I am sailing through a new sector on a crafted vessel and need to navigate very carefully. The ‘C’ word (craftsperson) or the ‘A’ word (for artist, my normal catch-all form of identification) don’t quite seem acceptable or appropriate. Neither am I a maker..So maybe I am an artist-maker? Or possibly a conceptual-artist-designer- maker–who-often-does craft-based installations. Anyhow, apparently this debate has been raging for centuries and will continue to do so. Thoughts in an email please.
To get to the crux of it, Rumi said:
'I go into the Christian Church, the Jewish Synagogue and the Muslim Mosque and I see one altar"
It's appropriate that the closest tube to Somerset House is Temple, as people coming into the space keep referring to it with words like temple, cathedral, shrine etc and seem drawn to it, gazing up at the roof and beyond into what has been mainly blue, sunny autumn sky.
The structure glistens at night and is already almost 25% woven..
