As part of New York Textile Month, there is a special exhibition celebrating Belgian design craftsmanship, curated by Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano.
Titled The Gift to be Simple, the exhibition features nine designers working with a variety of fabrics and textiles, from leather and raffia to handcrafted linen rugs and clay lamps.
Long a source of inspiration for textiles, Belgium still has a thriving flax, linen and weaving industry, although the spinning mills no longer exist.
As in the fashion industry, a new generation of Belgian textile designers is creating works that are completely future-oriented with their material research and experimental approaches.
New York Textile Month was created by Lidewij Edelkoort and is taking place for the seventh time in September to celebrate textile creativity and promote textile awareness. In a manifesto, Edelkoort explains that today’s artists no longer know the materials they work with. She calls for a renewed interest in material processes as fashion designers begin to delve into fabrics, interior designers rediscover upholstered furniture and art students take up the loom.
Natalia Brilli, one of the exhibitors, is perhaps best known for her former fashion label. Today she creates beautiful objects sheathed in recycled leather, as well as tapestries and objects in raffia, made in a family workshop in Madagascar and handmade in Belgium. Her works oscillate between surrealistic and symbolic influences and always invite you to take a second look.
Brussels-based textile designer Laure Kasiers designs and makes rugs and other textile objects in her studio. Using linen in unconventional and artisan techniques, she creates shapes and patterns that are mostly organic, as if they came from nature, like a subtle Degrade rug that exudes timelessness and craftsmanship.
Other designers in the exhibition are Emma Cogné, Design for Resilience, Vanessa Colignon, Charlotte Lancelot, Geneviève Levivier, Pascale Risbourg, Alexia De Ville and Céline Vahsen. Textile design, recontextualized.
Whether furniture, wall hangings or artistic installations – the traditional ideas of Belgian textile design are questioned and recontextualized. The event in New York shows that the discipline weaves, weaves and weaves new stories.
The exhibition is part of an initiative by Belgium is Design, which promotes Belgian design around the world, and is an initiative of three institutions: Flanders DC, MAD – Home of Creators and Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode (WBDM). The latter is a platform that supports the internationalization of designers and companies in the fashion and design industry in Wallonia and Brussels.
The Gift to be Simple exhibition will be held October 2-10 at 138 Wooster Street in Manhattan as part of New York Textile Month.
This translated article previously appeared on FashionUnited.uk.