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Martine Ghuys
Please, wait for the image to be loaded! Martine Ghuys
3. MARTINE GHUYS BELGIUM

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(...) Tapestry is eternal, sometimes disappearing for periods and sometimes being reborn in a different form. Perhaps it is this metamorphosis that attracts me so much to it. For this reason, too, I have committed myself to it. (…) Creating a work beginning with just one thread – this is the purest, simplest thing in the world. Through weaving, I live in timelessness. It is like a second skin; it almost becomes my body. One immerses oneself in work lasting for months; it has no beginning and no end, because during the work I am already thinking about the next tapestry. (...)

      (...) Tapestry is, however, not always creation by a single person, but is instead the product of a dialogue between designer and weaver. Whether this dialogue is with myself as an artist-weaver or with somebody else is of no significance. The only thing of importance is that eventually a work of total value should come into being. (...) I, for example, am a licier créteur, an artist-weaver, but I think that various paths can lead to the birth of a tapestry. Cooperation between designer and weaver can be especially valuable, since the weaver, by way of his or her hands-on work with the material, can enrich the work with new solutions, including solutions the designer may not have known about previously. (...)

      The mural arts prove that we can create really great things through solidarity. The creators of mural arts – in the case of tapestry, patrons, architects, designers, cartoon painters, and weavers – were in the past, too, suffused with a feeling of solidarity. It is due to the joint determination of artists that tapestry has continued to survive, although it counts as a slow and costly genre. Perhaps this is the reason why the association of Belgian tapestry artists, the Domaine de la Lice, has operated for more than thirty years without a break.

      The Web of Europe shows that politics aside and despite our differences, we are able to understand each other through art. I created my own part of the tapestry in such a way that it fitted in with the work of the other artists; when making it, however, I remained true to my own work without compromises. (...) It was a joy for me to be able to take part in this common work, which promises a new aesthetic quality. The end result of it I, along with my fellow-artists, look forward to discovering at the exhibition. I hope that this will be an occasion for the broadening and continuation of our dialogue on many different levels.