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Arts & Communication Textile agency in art

Figure 2. Monika Žaltauskaitė Grašienė, Total Equality. An installation created in collaboration with artist Brone Neverdauskiene and curator Ignas
Kazakevicius, 2011. © Monika Žaltė.

of the world. It represents the process of the formation and of the shroud of St. Mary reveal complex experiences of
unfolding of the person and the accompanying meanings, time, filled with tensions and repetitions.
as Deleuze described in his reflection on the Baroque and The drapery folds in Žaltauskaitė Grašienė’s work have
its connection with the Neo-Baroque of today . acquired an ontological meaning. In their own way, they
[12]
Drapery folds make up an integral part of art history, echo the aspiration of theory to overcome the duality of
testifying to the artist’s mastery of skills and opening up agent and object, self and other, near and far, expanding
many nuances of meaning in iconographic motifs. In our understanding of reality as an infinite process of
Lithuanian art, they achieved special expressiveness in the folding and unfolding. In the seminal artwork “Penelope’s
painting of Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, who concealed the Rag” (Figure 3), the sensual folds of a tunic have been
in expressible during Soviet times. In contemporary art, as transformed into a multi-meaning metaphor, capturing
in philosophy, the fold has become a conceptual metaphor, the archetype of femininity and the mythological theme of
bringing into the field of reflection phenomena and women weavers. One of them is Penelope, the faithful wife
processes of becoming that destroy binary oppositions. of Odysseus, who weaves a shroud for her husband’s father
According to Catherine Dormor, the author of the book A while waiting for him to return and undoes it at night. She
Philosophy of Textile – Between Practice and Theory: is not only a meticulous weaver but also a smart creator
“To think of folding from the viewpoint of folded or who has turned her craft into an intellectual activity and a
survival strategy. Weaving and undoing are her intellectual
pleated fabric focuses on the interplay of folding and way of being . Žaltauskaitė Grašienė, similarly, is weaving
[14]
unfolding as multiple and complex spaces. While the by disrupting and reassembling nuances of meaning. One
seemingly flat fabric hangs somewhat austerely from can only agree with the idea of curator Jennifer Harris,
the hips, the slightest movement of the body causes who included this artwork in the exhibition “Art_Textiles”
those pleats to unfold and reveal their excess fabric at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester in 2015,
secreted within, but also the curvature of the hips, the that “Penelope’s cloth now refers to something on which
waist, and the legs that are implicated in the movement. we work ceaselessly but never complete, while Penelope
In their unfolding, the pleats reveal their formation; herself is the emblem of fidelity” .
[15]
in their formation, their unfolding is created. This is
the temporal field of the fold. It holds within itself an The magnificent work “Penelope’s Rag” depicts a
unfolding event: folds within folds.” [13] heavily exaggerated drapery motif, which has stirred the
folds of the meanings of myth and history, linking them
Drapery and folds are the essential motifs in to individual experiences. The artist admits that the idea
Žaltauskaitė Grašienė’s work, functioning in her oeuvre as for the work was born when she was traveling, much like
more or less independent characters. In her artworks and Odysseus. The sculpture of Penelope, discovered in the
series – “Penelope’s Rag” (2013), “Mary’s Rugs” (2015), ruins of Persepolis at the National Museum of Iran, left a
“Smiling” (2016), and “Queen’s Rugs” (2016) – drapery profound impression. Virtuoso drapery carved from marble
has become an incessant process of folding or weaving covers the woman’s body, captured in the statue, which has
of artistic meanings into an intertextual network that been preserved without a head. At a certain moment, while
encompasses both cultural history and contemporary looking at her, the expressive folds persistently began to
references. Ariadne’s thread, Penelope’s cloth, or the motifs enter her consciousness. The large-scale tapestry, made on

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2023) 5 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1867