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Nora Chalmet
Please, wait for the image to be loaded! Nora Chalmet
24. Nora Chalmet Belgium

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I was always attracted to working with textiles, fashion design, making clothes, making threads, weaving, and so on. The next step was to become a teacher of design and weaving. With or without hidden messages or traces of my personal history, script, forms of writing, fabrics, paper, ribbons, and belts constituted the basis of my early artistic work. The way in which I like to express myself can be explained through the name of the textile group ‘Fibre et Fil’ (‘Fibre and Thread’): conversion of fibres and threads into woven contemporary art forms. (…)

      When the concept is to weave a traditional tapestry, it needn’t be woven by the artist himself or herself. Depending on the difficulties in the weaving technique, it is not always an advantage if the artist executes the work in person. A weaving studio has professional weavers who can successfully execute all the difficult parts in the weaving process. But it is important that the artist who has made the project exerts an influence on the execution, by following all the steps in the weaving process and by intervening where necessary. For contemporary tapestries which start from other techniques, materials, or shapes, execution will probably be better done by the artist himself or herself, depending on the artist’s level of competence in this field.

      Participation in the Web of Europe project and the eighteenth-century Brussels tapestry Mercury Hands over the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs as a choice represented a big challenge for me. At the same time, I hope that the project will become an opportunity to build international contacts with other professional weaving artists.

      For the project Web of Europe, I used the same techniques and materials as in my other work: two types of warp (nylon and copper thread). For the wefts I used a variety of different materials: paper thread, paper strips, raffia, tyvek, copper thread… The mixture of the recycled materials, personal elements, the classical theme, and the technique made this project an exciting experience for me.