Contemporary Embroidery Art International Exchange Project.
Scholars and artists, are invited to think, research and create in this environment, making connections through residency projects across national borders. The residency examines cultural differences, through living in different historical and cultural backgrounds, communicates with locals artists, resulting in new ideas, inspiration, and the nutrients for the new creation. This key residency project provides for the incubation of Chinese contemporary art and culture, strengthens the confidence of Chinese contemporary art and culture in the international art platform, is a catalyst for more international cultural and academic exchanges , enhances the Chinese younger generation in terms of their own cultural identity. The artist in this resident programme can build a real and effective communication mechanism by using the power of art to bring more vitality and possibilities for cultural, historical and ecological constructive activity.
Suzhou is the Embroidery City of China. The production of hand embroidery is world renowned.
Alice Kettle produced a collaborative work through this workshop programme by working with renowned Chinese embroiderers and art students. The work made over the course of the residency at the Hanshan Art Museum was exhibited in the exhibition ‘Horizontal Crossings’ and subsequently acquired for the permanent collection of the Hanshan Art Museum.
Alice Kettle
The Narrative Thread Lecture, Soochow University China
Textiles, through their mode of production, the materials used and invented motifs, are particularly effective producers of histories that entwine place and people. Textiles can be read as texts that narrate experiences of culture, time, and purpose. This talk looks at particularly at embroidered textiles as a means to tell stories through its descriptive possibilities which chronicle personal experiences and current events. This material testimony to the biographies, autobiographies, cultural identities, is found in the recesses of its fabric structure, in its production and through its expressive potential in making. I will reflect on my own artistic narrative textiles in the context of other contemporary examples.
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