Dagedraad | Threads of the Day

Wevershuis, (museum of weaving)
Middelstegracht 143, Leiden

www.wevershuis.nl

19 september - 12 oktober 2008

open: di t/m zo: 13 - 16 uur
open: Tuesday - Sunday: 1 - 4 p.m.

Sept 27 + 28, 12 - 6 p.m.
(12 - 18 uur: tijdens de Leidse kunstroute)
slideshow by Sonja: Sept 27th, 7 p.m.

installations, drawings, prints, sound and video

These images of work in this show are available for use by the press:
Email: sonjavank -at- hotmail -dot- com
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Sonja and Sen both born and raised in New Zealand (Aotearoa) have lived in Leiden since 1999.
Sonja also works as a webdesigner and recently completed a Masters in Media Technology at Leiden University.
Sen completed a Masters in Islamology in 2005 and translates Persian literature into English.

Their children feature in some of these artworks as participants in the threads woven by their parents.

The site-specific installations, soundscapes, interactive works, prints, drawings and paintings presented in the evocative Weaver's House, are responses to the threads of history, in connection with the contemporary human condition. Many peoples present the world as being woven: its threads are lives, and their pattern is history. There are, for example, the Fates or Moirae in Greek mythology, who are the white-robed personifications of destiny. In Homer's Iliad the Moera spins the thread of life for men at their birth. Similar spinning goddesses of fate were known as the Norns in Norse mythology, and there is a parallel in the Baltic goddess Laima and her two sisters.

Here we use the theme of 'threads' as "elements of a story", For example as you enter this museum you can read the hanging cloth outside in various ways in relation to the sounds you might notice as you enter. You might or might not notice the Persian text in this cloth, you might instead see it as a curtain or as an ephemeral form akin to a flag. The threads of the 'foreign' text might form a relationship (a story) with other unfamiliar elements such as the near-abstact soundscape created out of the chimes of Londen's Big Ben or the oversized-joker-baby playing card.

Offering, silkscreen print + Eva was hier

For us, the Persian text is not unfamiliar: it comes from the Bahai Writings, and Sen has been studying and translating from Persian for a number of years now. Words in a language can be seen as threads which together weave complex meanings.
Our video Grains of Salt uses the metaphor of salt as units which are simultaneously distinctive and integrated. The voices melt through each other and for bilingual visitors create threads of meaning different to those in the separate languages.


Water and Clay mixes not just Persian and English but also modes of language. The Persian text written in chalk is the recent text of an Iranian theologian invoking an ancient plea for human rights (a universal right to a glass of water and a lump of clay) for the Bahais in Iran, while the texts in English on the balls are direct statements concerning contemporary visions of the world. These statements are unfinished sentences, which visitors are instructed to complete.

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Tablets | Tafelen, cast resin slabs. Download a high resolution of this image for use by the press