9 ANCESTORS | 2019-2020

My ancestors, due to their way of living, have been always surrounded by the felt carpets. Carpets accomponied my ancestors from birth to death. They gave them warmness, beauty and protection.

 “The series 9 ancestors” shows the shapes of my ancestors reflected by the carpets. Each carpet is a closed circle of life, with the essence of an ancestor, its peculiarity, the unknown, which one nevertheless knows. The images of my ancestors live in my subconscious. At the same time, I am also an imago that my ancestors imagined. I look inside myself and search for the traces, which live on in me.

The wool for the carpets is coloured by the herbal dyes only.

The felt carpets were made using the “Ala-Kiyiz” technique. The patterns are worked directly into the felt underlay. With Ala-Kiyiz, the artist gives the wool a certain latitude – an interaction, where the artist cannot completely control the outcome.

Saima, Suleikha, Khalit, Schamseruy, Nagimullah, Schikhabutdin… I am looking at the names in the family tree, even the names that aren't written down. The carpets are a kind of parallel dimension, where different time levels, events and experiences coexist.

The carpet is ready.

"Hard as a bone,

Soft as a cotton wool,

Smooth as an ice

Light as a feather"