3rd European textile and Fibre Art Festival - Catalogue

IRENE ANTON
Germany / Våcija
Born 1966
Lausitzer Str. 52
1099 Berlin, Germany
Education
2002–2005 MA in Arts – University of
Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
(UdK)
1989–1994 University of Fine Arts,
Berlin (UdK), Fashion and
Textile design
1988–1989 University of Wuppertal
(U-GH), Industrial design
1986–1988 Academy of Fine Arts (AKI)
in Enschede, the Netherlands
Selected exhibitions
2007 Symposium for sculpture,
Luckenwalde-Germany
2006 Festival “Aquamediale” in
June 2007, Lübben,
Germany
“miniartextil” exhibition,
Como, Italy
Artist in residence – Gölazi,
Turkey; Hønefoss, Norway;
Céglie, Italy; Taunusstein,
Germany
2005 Galerie “La Girafe” Berlin,
Germany Festival “Moved
Wind”, Region of lake Eder,
Germany
2004 MAC in tránsito, Santiago
de Chile
2003 “NotArt”, University of Fine
Arts, Berlin, Germany
“In Between”, University of
Graz, Austria
2002 “Free Spaces”, University
of Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
Bouts de passion in
Lingolsheim, France
2001 Gallery Novalis 8 in Berlin
Awards
2006 2 nd Prize of the landscapecompetition
“Labyrinth in
the Forest”, Sakksala Art
Radius in Finland
2004 1 st Prize of the art
competition “Moved Wind”
2002 Finalist’s Diploma,
International Textile-design
competition “Premios
ATEVAL”, Ontinyent /
Valéncia, Spain
2001 Honorable mention of the
international design
competition “All Japan
Chinese Carpets Promotion”,
Kyoto, Japan
At the first moment, this series of quilts seems
to be a number of different harmless images
done in bright and powerful colours, but at
the second look, you’ll discover images of
arms and weapons, environmental pollution,
logos and names of global players that are
so powerful that they already conquered the
whole planet with their products, destroying
the smaller companies and permanently are
extorting poorer countries “offering” them
contracts with pretty bad conditions to buy
their products and also are exploiting “illegal”
immigrants in their own countries
working like modern slaves for rather nothing
in the legendary “sweatshops”.
This series shows the wide range of problems
that started with the history of colonialism,
where the roots of the globalization are
nowadays.
I chose silk in my work because it’s a symbolic
material for luxury, the luxury of some
selected countries that are profiting by the
globalization; it’s a shiny, smooth and comfortable
material presented in a clear minimalist
aesthetic, characterizing the nice
coloured expensive world of capitalism.
To quilt silk gives the sensation of making scars
into the material, torturing it stitch by stitch.
It’s also deeply interesting to show modern
phenomena with an old technique, that
gives the work a certain tension.
It’s an adequate technique and material to
characterize our world like an injured body.
These small silk quilts are “wounded” by nasty
images and examples functioning as a mirror
of our society.
The title of my work is an ironical comment on
the former advertising campaign of
Benetton, using images of people in situations
of emergency and to reduce them to
the function of being an eye-catcher that
provokes a scandal of an unforgettable publicity
campaign – Capitalism coquetting with
poverty and misfortune.
In this way, with my title I’m just turning round
the meaning again showing real problems in
an aesthetical “package”.
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