Animal Textile
Exploration of the animal theme through a selection of antique and modern tapestries from TAMAT, compared with contemporary works.
TEMPORARY EXHIBITION
25 March 2023 to 10 September 2023
“Then my trembling fingers grasp each thread, and in the golden meshes of this fine net, harmonious hunter, I trap my dreams.”
José-Maria de Heredia, The Trophies: ‘La Siesta’, 1905, p.108
The place of the animal in art is preponderant, protean, plastic and fluid; these living beings have not always been distinguished by specialists, who have often preferred to analyse men and women in the foreground of works. Nevertheless, some were already the main subjects, as shown by the animals depicted on the walls of cave paintings, the tapestry of The Lady with the Unicorn commissioned by Antoine de Viste (1484-1538) or Dürer’s animal portraits in the 16th century.
Why does the animal seem to burst onto the art scene today?
Like a reverie, TAMAT proposes here a space augmented by presences, punctuated by the poems of Parnassian José-Maria de Heredia, an interweaving of forces, potentials and stories that these living creatures bring with them. As in a cadavre-exquis, one form calls the other, reducing the distances between the aquatic and the aerial worlds, between the desire for realism and phantasmagoria, finally offering the possibility of new cosmograms.
Text by Marion Duquerroy, art historian.
ARTISTS
ANDRIN Caroline – CHAMARET Lydie – COENRAETS Florence – COLLIN André – CRUNELLE José – DELTOUR Louis – DIZIER Christine – DUBRUNFAUT Edmond – FORCES MURALES – FORTUNÉ Maïder – FRANCKEN Frans – FRANÇOIS Michel – GOBE Jérémy – GOSSYE Dolores – KRAKOWSKI Julie – PAPARELLA Juan – PROGIN Jérôme – RANSY Jean – SALAUD Julien – VAN KESSEL Jean – VANMECHELEN Koen – VAUBOURG Valérie – WYSOCKI Elodie Dolores GOSSYE. La Luz, 2014. Collection of the artist. Bartélémy Decobecq
Exhibition curator: Aurélie Champion
TAMAT would like to thank the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai, BPS22, the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and the Puppet House in Tournai for the loan of some works.
