Isabella Ducrot
2024
08.11 – 07.12.2024
Opening Thursday, 07.11 at 5 – 7 PM
Belenius
Θaβros
A little over a year ago Isabella Ducrot’s book “The Checkered Cloth” was gifted to me by Katarina Sjögren at Belenius after I’d given a vivid account of my obsession with vintage checkered shirts that I’ve bought since the late 1980s. Reading that book and writing this text has made me try to understand a little more about the reasons I so love the woven, especially with designs of square patterns in several colors. As with most things I realize there’s no final answer, nor do I think there’s one single reason. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I actually want to solve this, as if it were a riddle. But the fact remains that certain checkered patterns make me feel good just seeing them. Like certain foods create a craving to devour them, the cloths create an urge to envelop my body with them.
It was a delight to read Isabella Ducrot’s reflections on Simone Martini’s altarpiece “The Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus” and the checkered cloth lining of the Angel’s mantle, this “secret part of the Angel’s clothing” in the words of Ducrot. Her thoughts are not unlike mine, concerning an enigma that one can chose to leave in mystery. Further into the book Ducrot recalls different checkered textiles and memories associated with them. She asks herself why checkered cloth is almost entirely absent in ancient western painting and after looking into the matter concludes that the history of plaid is connected to women and their worlds which excludes this cloth – and these worlds – from being represented in older art. Once checkered cloths start appearing in art, she reflects, it is to connote the status of those wearing it: people who were rarely depicted in earlier art. Ducrot continues reflecting on the origins of weaving and on its parallel to the development of thought and language, its structure and texture, musicality and poetry. To me, she seems to be saying that weaving is one of the most human of activities. It represents and preserves life itself.
Richard Julin, Artistic director of Accelerator at Stockholm University, 2024
(excerpt from exhibition text).
