Materializing Migration: Weaving the Mashrabiya in Nevin Aladağ’s Screens I–III (2016)

Abstract

Textiles and communication have a longstanding relationship, with many cultures using textiles as a vehicle for transmitting information.¹ In this article, I present my analysis of Nevin Aladağ’s woven public sculpture, Screens I–III. This research forms part of my PhD project, “Materialising Migration: Transcultural Textiles in Germany.” My research seeks to examine how artists use textile processes to develop understanding of cultural transfer between the Middle East and Germany. Screens I–III consists of three freestanding stainless steel screens with repeat patterns created using granite and marble blocks (cobblestones). The piece was commissioned in 2016 by the public sculpture initiative KÖR (Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien) and was displayed in the pedestrian zone of Graben, Austria. Aladağ’s artistic practice is concerned with the notion of literal and metaphorical boundaries in this article. I examine Aladağ’s use of weaving to construct Screens I–III and the cultural differences between her Turkish and German identities. I argue that she subverts weaving to renegotiate polarizing views of different cultures, while challenging traditional perceptions of textiles.

Keywords:

• textiles
• weaving
• migration
• transculturation
• transcultural encounters
• Nevin Aladağ

Notes

Notes

1 For example, Afghan women use War Rugs to communicate secret information and process emotional turmoil.

2 Ortiz suggests that the neologism “transculturation” should replace the term “acculturation,” as acculturation is concerned with the process of transition from one culture to another, and its manifold social repercussions.

3 In “Counterpoint and Double Critique in Edward Said and Abdelkebir Khatibi: A TranscolonialComparison,” Lionnet uses the weaving metaphor to illuminate Khatibi’s concept of “double critique.” Khatibi developed “double critique” to disrupt traditional internal/external and Self/Other (colonizer/colonized) binaries. She highlights the unbounded, “future-oriented” qualities inherent in the weaving metaphor: “this motion is directed forward and back toward what precedes it so as to overlap with it, envelop it, and then point toward its exterior so as to move beyond it” (Lionnet 2011, 404).

4 The medical use of screening for diagnostics suggests exposition and revelation.

5 The mashrabiya is prominent across the Mashriq (Eastern Arab World), the Levant, and Egypt. Aladağ’s engagement with the mashrabiya can be read as a specific reference to Turkey as well as to the Middle East in general.

6 Reina Lewis examines the objectification of Oriental women in Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (2004).

7 Liminality is suggested in Lösch and Breinig’s theory of transdifference. As Lucia Krämer outlines in Bollywood in Britain: Cinema, Brand, Discursive Complex, transdifference is now positioned as “a concept … for theorizing the phenomena of (cultural) inbetweenness” (Krämer 2017, 126). Other theorists engaging with the concept of inbetweenness are Lars Allolio Näcke and Britta Kalscheuer, as well as Angel Rama from a South American perspective.

8 Ivan Shadr (1887–1941) was a prolific Russian sculptor who depicted the socialist ideologies of Marx and other prominent thinkers.

9 Student protests erupted in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Chicago, Mexico City, and London as a backlash against the state (be that capitalist, communist, or fascist).

10 In the fashion and interior industries, forced labor and even child labor are prevalent across textile construction and embellishment processes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lydia Wooldridge

Lydia Wooldridge is a PhD candidate under the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)’s South, West and Wales-Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW-DTP). Her interdisciplinary research project, “Materialising Migration: Transcultural Textiles in Germany,” offers new insights into transcultural encounters and visual culture (textile focus). Lydia also teaches visual culture for the degree courses at Bristol School of Art. [email protected]