On The Tapis - Weaves of Democracy
“On The Tapis | Sur Le Tapis”
Weaves of Democracy | 2017-2019
| This is a very small history, but it may start a few people moving along the lines of world
thinking | Joyce Loch (Rugs & Dyes of Ouranoupolis, 1964)
”On the tapis” is an idiom and a calque of the 17th century French phrase, Sur le tapis, referring to
the carpet formerly used to cover the council table, around which an issue of a great importance
was under debate. The expression is still in use also in English and Greek (Επί τάπητος) meaning
to bring forward a significant subject, put it up for discussion and under consideration.
The work takes its title directly from the French phrase and consists mainly of a series of eighteen
hand woven wool rugs and cotton textiles (dimensions variable). The rugs and textiles are hand
knotted on traditional looms, produced at the Rizarios Embroidery School for girls, in the traditional
village of Monodendri, Zagorochoria, Greece. Wool rugs of larger size are produced using
traditional weaving methods in Nepal by Tunfenkian rug industries and smaller size rugs are hand
woven by Tibetan refugees at the Jawalakhell Handicraft Center, Tibetian Refugee Camp, in
Nepal.
The body of the work examines democracy as a global ideal posing questions on its current state
of crisis worldwide, through the prism of human rights, freedom, equality and unity, by looking at
debate issues on critical social and political themes like oppression, immigration, freedom of the
press, freedom of movement, post-truth and free speech. The work is bringing together our
collective and personal stories on these subjects, drawn from various and diverse sources, such as
texts from news articles, Influential statements by human rights activists as, poems, philosophical
thoughts, infographics, street grafitti and everyday testimonials about lifelong issues on the
violation of human rights.
The iconography of rugs and textiles, On the Tapis, reference archetypes expressed as traditional
themes that appear repetitively across cultures all over the world, such as the The tree of life, The
wheel of life, The garden, The hero, etc. They also embed old and new archetypical symbols
commonly used all over the motifs of world textiles, architecture and ceramics from western to
eastern cultures, for example, birds as the messengers of news, roosters as protectors, dogs as
safeguards, flowers and fruits such as pomegranates as abundance, circles and stars as signs of
rebirth, peacocks as signs of resurrection, crosses as signs of balance, eyes as self awareness
and against evil, The Greek key or Meander as a sign of infinity and the eternal flow of things,
Ouroboros, a serpent biting its tail as a symbol of eternity, representing that all is one and so on.
While the morphology of most of these archetypal symbols changed with time, their core meaning
remains intact. They reappear today in all places of everyday life and are common in popular
culture, from social media icons (socialtograms) to logos, anime and movie characters. Therefore,
Ouroboros today becomes the restart & recycle icon, the small bird ( sparrow, canary ) transforms
to the Twitter icon, dragons turn into drones. All these old symbols and their new manifestations
are put together into the rugs and tapestries, interacting with each other, re-weaving the common
ground of humanity.
The series on cotton textiles are inspired by “Narrative Textiles “and make a direct reference to the
traditional Greek embroideries referred as Kalimera (Greek: Καλημέρα meaning good morning)
that hanged at the main entrance of the house as a form hospitality (Greek: Φιλοξενία) and a
warm welcome to all the guests. Works woven on cotton address the theme of hospitality on the
occasion of the recent uprooting of millions of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, and
connecting it to the inspiring story of the humanitarian couple Joice and Sydney Loch who in 1928
settled in the small village of Ouranoupolis and offered substantial assistance to refugees reviving
the manufacturing of handmade carpets in the village tower, Pyrgos, the famous "carpets of the
Pyrgos”.
There is a shared language between text and textile, (textus from late Latin, literally meant to
weave words), that intersects with the woven fabric, creating an essential dialogue between
intimate and public a woven composition, a metaphor of words being like threads woven into a
universal fabric. The process of weaving on the loom is similar to composing a universal narrative
of shared memories. This narrative is interwoven into the rugs and textiles putting forward
universal questions that are coming from deep inside in a zone of intimacy as it embodies the
public voice. This is an amalgamation of diverse voices, an overlapping thread made by many
hands, establishing an essential vocabulary of our shared human history.