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The Materiality of Isolation

1.
Isolation Boxes

Isolation boxes become spaces for compositions of mundane, everyday objects that have now become precious to us. As replacing things is no longer simple, we come to treasure the normal.

The symbiosis between the object and the container creates a dialogue between what is contained and what contains it. Both coexist, forming one story.

Acrylic partitions rise all around us to create visual and physical separations, to protect us, to contain us, to connect us. But in all its transparency and glossiness, acrylic also reflects, reveals and magnifies what it protects.

2.
Cast in Ice

Alive and vivid nature is frozen inside of ice structures, as if suspended indefinitely until it is time to be thawed.

Isolation prevents us from enjoying the seasons. May we contain the spring for a bit longer until we can go out outside again? Will it keep or will it spoil?

3.
Bundles and Rolls

We are bundled, wrapped with strings, covered with masks.

We don’t recognize each other behind the wrappings. The outer appearance becomes more important than the content, signaling protection, care, consciousness. Are you bundled up yet?

We can’t wait to release our ties and re-discover our true colors, the unique patterns created by the pressure of being compressed, folded, rolled up for months on end.

Learn more about the Liliana Becerra design studio.

Autonomy and Panculture

Looking at artist Dan Coopey’s rattan work, Untitled (Susa), you can’t immediately see that it encloses secret treasures within. Woven ellipses of fibers circumvent stacked volumes of space, in a dynamic unbalanced spiral. Examination reveals that the structurally rigid vessel, draping though it appears, is fully closed at the top. This is unexpected in basketry, a medium associated with function. Most often, a basket is designed to leave its contents accessible.

Coopey provides cryptic clues in the list of the work’s materials: “Rattan, Bronze, Chewing Gum, Oak”. Coopey works often with gum. Chewing gum and depositing it inside a vessel, he says, is a kind of signature, a way to add his DNA to the work. Chewed gum, he notes, has a history as ancient as basketry. He explains that the imprint of ancient basket forms found pressed into clay are matched by carbon dating to teeth found fossilized in chewed tree saps. Fossilization makes permanent an isolated moment in time, and the objects enshrined in Coopey’s woven forms act similarly, as personal time capsules.

AT A MOMENT WHEN WE ARE FOCUSSED ON THE INTENTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CULTURAL ENCOUNTER, COOPEY’S WORKS GESTURE TO A POTENTIAL FOR UNLABORED COEXISTENCE, TO THE SIMULTANEOUS POSSIBILITY OF ASSIMILATION AND PRESERVED AUTONOMY.

Coopey is an artist born and currently working in the U.K. In 2016, he was granted an artist residency in Brazil, a country where basket making is still an active part of identity and domestic product. Instead of returning home when the residency ended, Coopey stayed. While in Brazil, Coopey immersed himself in basket culture, making forms that fuse his own idiosyncratic woven creations with traditional baskets he found in markets. The body of work which emerged speaks to how the experience of being an outsider amplifies the self. In these pieces the liquid geometry of Coopey’s vessels intersects traditional baskets, shaped by their origin and purpose. Each remains distinct as they combine to shared form. At a moment when we are focussed on the intentions and consequences of cultural encounter, Coopey’s works gesture to a potential for unlabored coexistence, to the simultaneous possibility of assimilation and preserved autonomy.

Coopey is fascinated by the ‘panculture’ of basketmaking, how a globally ubiquitous technique offers space for an artist to connect through a collective community of craft. His work attests to the entry granted by shared expertise. COVID-19 forced Coopey to return to England, to a more isolated practice. There, his work, like many of us, has returned to autonomous forms. At this moment we have reverted to singular shapes, secreting our treasured objects inside.

Learn more about the art of Dan Coopey.

Celebrating the Evidence of Life, through Repair

Upon examination, any historic darning sampler will show evidence of painstaking effort to hide the stains and tatters of life. Careful patching, even reweaving, demonstrates not just the technical prowess of the mender, but a society bent on preserving perfection. Repair hides the destructive markings of lived garments — signs of falling down, habitual motion, or evidence that one’s big toe is just that — too big.

Artist Celia Pym is a mender of a different sort. She reconstructs garments with an almost violent flair for surgical intervention. The overtness of her repair is celebratory. Threads and yarns used to close holes and graft new skins are highly visible, stitched in contrasting colors. Pym sometimes chases the human story in garments of people she has not known with forensic attention, eager to uncover the story of the wearer’s unravelings. Once, taking possession of a sweater worn to symmetrical holes above the elbows, Pym researched the life of its former inhabitant, discovering that he worked at a drafting table, thinking with his arms pressed to its surface.

PYM SOMETIMES CHASES THE HUMAN STORY IN GARMENTS OF PEOPLE SHE HAS NOT KNOWN WITH FORENSIC ATTENTION, EAGER TO UNCOVER THE STORY OF THE WEARER’S UNRAVELINGS.

Pym finds great joy in patching things back together. In addition to being a professional artist, she also holds a degree in nursing. One can feel within Pym the totality of her desire to repair. In fact, Pym commits so entirely to this practice that she surpasses the simple restoration of shredded garments back to original function. Deeply moved by the moment in the story of Peter Pan when Wendy offers to stitch Peter’s lost shadow back onto him, Pym is inspired to mend less traditional forms. During quarantine she turned her attention to paper, perhaps a reference to her imaginings of Peter’s flat shadow, and mended a torn paper bag used to bring home potatoes from the market.

Pym explains, “It isn’t just the torn bag which I felt I could repair. I was also taken by the creases, where the bag had been rolled down, a recording in wrinkles of exactly how full of potatoes the bag had been. A small gesture evidencing my outing, which these days are more rare.”

Pym has also been mending her studio sweater, and the studio armchair in which she sits. These ongoing works are a self-documenting diary, evidence of how a day accrues drama. “There can be no repair without damage,” she says. “The damage is life’s story. To hide it would be to erase it.” The chair’s devoted and continuous darning ages along with her. An ever-changing canvas. An evolving skin.

Learn more about the art of Celia Pym.

Stitched Into Bloom

Colorful stacks of hand-dyed cloth and scraps line the perimeter of artist Cody Tumblin’s live/work studio. They are the building blocks of collaged and sewn compositions, artworks which straddle the worlds of quilts and paintings. Saturated and brightly hued, they are imbued with memory. Tumblin formed his bond with cloth in Tennessee. As a child, his interests ranged beyond the terrain of conventional Midwestern masculinity, and his mother’s costume sewing promoted a joyful practice of improvisational self-expression. Cloth also indelibly connects Tumblin to feelings of protection, conjuring flashbacks of hiding from tornadoes in the basement, his family’s hands clasped tightly under quilts.

Tumblin’s materials are a personal idiom. This language begins in the dye bath, an alchemical process which transforms the cloth, evoking the transfigured play of early childhood. As piecing begins, scraps are saved for later use. When gathered into new compositions, the fragments already possess an accounting of where the artist has been: evidence of time spent in the dye vats, recognizable negative spaces rendered by shapes previously cut out. The works continue evolving into bold, abstract forms, bright and joyful, often in the shape of flowers in full bloom.

PERSONAL IDIOM SPEAKS TO A SOLITARY PRACTICE. LIKE A SELF-POLLINATING FLOWER, IT SELF-REFERS AND SELF-RENEWS. BUT WHEN TUMBLIN’S SEEDLING SCRAPS BLOSSOM INTO FULLY REALIZED WORKS, HIS SPECIFIC MATERIAL LANGUAGE FLOWERS, INVITING US TO LUXURIATE IN ITS EXPRESSION.

Like traditional quilts, these works are constructed with great attention and care. Drawn to the medium for the better part of ten years, Tumblin has been fascinated by Amish quilt culture, the geometric patterns and brilliant colors. He remains curious about how personal artistic language meets communal practice. Tumblin’s sewn constructions move beyond Amish motif-based quilting, yet his work partakes of foundational quilt underpinnings: making from what you have and love, and improvising as cloth is joined.

There is electricity in the hybrid space between painting and quilting. Painting enjoys an established, conceptual place in fine arts, while quilting is historically marginalized, often relegated to the domain of craft. Tumblin’s works stay plugged in to both canons, vibrating with the conceptual impact of painting, reinforced by the associative powers of a quilt constructed with the building blocks of personal history.

Personal idiom speaks to a solitary practice. Like a self-pollinating flower, it self-refers and self-renews. But when Tumblin’s seedling scraps blossom into fully realized works, his specific material language flowers, inviting us to luxuriate in its expression.

Learn more about the art of Cody Tumblin.

Memory Palace

“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning  your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird: keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guest.”

- HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

This recent work is rooted in personal curiosity about how small, specific stories in my queer narrative might lead to wider conversations, and become installations that serve as axis points of innumerable relationships.

My research pays close attention to the craft of natural dyeing, innovative print practices, and how I might achieve dimension and narrative in my work. Cloth tells stories about our shared humanness. I want to explore the idea of small stories that impact the viewer through repetition, pattern, and texture. I find political agency through the use of upcycling everyday cloth and objects from thriftstores and have adapted a humbleprocess of ‘rag’ creations that become narratives. Small stories represent the fragments of patched data which then form critical positions for under-represented perspectives.

Stories establish our place in the world 

Stories aid us in acting wisely 

Stories shape perspectives
 
Stories help us understand others 

Stories pass down knowledge and morals

Small Stories/The Contemplation of Suchness/Memory Palace 2020

Growing up queer, I sacrificed authenticity to minimize humiliation and prejudice. The objects here hope to reveal which parts of my life truly depict me and which parts I create to protect myself. When we learn how to make things, craft our own goods, mend, heal and tread with reverence, we put a tiny dent into the cycle of ceaseless consumption and hate.

Marginalization of queer people in the south has a tacit aesthetic, and in the small stories about rags I seek to pinpoint the gravity of my cultural agency as a queer artist. The rags acquire meaning through constructed collaged stories that result in site-specific installations that reference human suffering, mortality and grace. With stories being so central to human cognition and communication, I hope viewers see themselves reflected in my small stories about queer and feel safe to reevaluate some of their ideas about gender and sexuality.

Douglas Pierre Baulos received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

He regularly teaches workshops and lectures on his research in book arts, drawing and visual ecology. In 2009 Baulos won the President’s Award For Excellence In Teaching at UAB.

He currently is the Assistant Professor of Drawing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the curriculum director at Studio by the Tracks, an art center that provides free art classes to emotionally conflicted children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder or other mental illnesses. His drawings, installations, and books have been exhibited/published both nationally and internationally. His current works are explorations (visual) and meditations (poetry) centering on his ideas of spirituality, love, death, shelter, and hope.

Learn more about the art of Doug Baulos.

The Mask Becomes Us

The mask may be Covid-19's most compelling textile story. This small piece of cloth has come to symbolize our current global state. Beyond its function of disease prevention, the tiny garment is a marquis of personal identity, a billboard announcing our allegiances. Where our mouths are hidden from view, the mask has come to speak for us. As the pandemic restructures our economies and our priorities, the mask belies our preferences, politics, and cultural identities. The mask separates us from communal air just as it filters our every breath into it. It is now its own form of art.

Artist Rachel Ehlin-Smith hand wove live flowers into this mask to bring calm to its wearer through aromatherapy - connection to the earth through scent. @mrblueskye

Icelandic textile artist Ýr Jóhannsdóttir made masks to cope with the emotions and  isolation she experienced in quarantine. @yrurari

Referred to as ‘digital love letters,’ costume designers and lovers Andrew Jordan and Iggy Soliven made these masks for one another as a way of being together when quarantine kept them apart. @slythytoves @ouget

Nigerian-American designer Mapate Diop makes masks from ankara, traditional West-African printed fabric, to celebrate his heritage while integrating it into a uniquely American streetwear style. @weardiop

Designer Rami Kashou celebrates cultural identity in limited-edition masks which emulate a modern day version of the traditional Palestinian thobe. @ramikashou

Japanese Designer Prospective Flow made this mask and matching hat, bringing friendliness and human emotion back to the masked face. @prospectiveflow @mutsu_by_pf

Artist Kate Kretz cathartically rips apart MAGA hats and reconstructs them in an effort to confront the Americans who are complicit in the administration’s cruelty and destruction of our democracy. @katekretzartist

Sweatpants and Anxiety in the Age of Covid

Early in New York City’s Coronavirus outbreak (after the stay-at-home order went into effect, but before a field hospital was erected in Central Park), I saw a funny post on social media. It was a screenshot of a Zoom meeting with five or six twenty-something female participants, each smiling broadly as they hoisted a leg into the small rectangular frame of the video call. The caption read: How to test your team’s work-from-home productivity: Check who’s wearing real pants. Only one of the women wore “real” pants, and hers were jeans. The others all displayed some form of “leisure” wear, sweatpants, or leggings. One even wore red plaid pajama pants – Quelle horreur! I remember chuckling to myself over my morning tea. I, too, had been thinking about how I hadn’t worn anything but sweatpants in over a week, even as I donned a collared shirt or blouse for the occasional Zoom work call. Soon after, similar posts, memes, and articles cropped up everywhere from Instagram to the New York Times, dedicated to the phenomenon of Zoom dressing: business on top, Netflix-and-chill below.

Although the post was only in front of me for a moment, its impression has persisted, and evolved, through the continuing months of lockdown. Not because the image was funny (although I did laugh), but because the immediate, easy humor belied an anxiety at play underneath. We are each anxious about what life will look like after this is over, about what our wardrobes (and our bodies and our societies) will resemble. This collective anxiety is long-steeped, and bears classist, racist, and colonial tensions.

What, ultimately, is a pair of sweatpants? It is a pair of trousers made from a soft knit textile, secured by an elastic or drawstring waistband. The name refers to the garment’s original function as exercise clothing, pants to be worn while sweating. That seems innocuous enough, so why do sweatpants attract such stigma? Long before the pandemic, legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who headed the house of Chanel for over 30 years, quipped: “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat.” Why do we care what someone wears below the waist while they are on Zoom? Why do sweatpants fail to constitute “real” pants? Extrapolating across the memes and articles, it appears that “real” corresponds to pants that are made of woven fabric rather than knit, fastened by buttons and zippers instead of elastic. “Real pants” are tailored, using carefully designed pattern pieces, darts, seams, and tucks to fit around the body. Where sweatpants are stretchy and pliable, “real” pants are rigid, stiff. They are pants that contain your body rather than give way to it.

On the surface, the anxiety about sweatpants is part of a larger debate over “athleisure”, which has been raging in the fashion industry for some time. The debate often targets women who wear yoga pants and leggings to brunch instead of to the gym. Evoking the tropes of Mark Zuckerberg’s CEO hoodie and suburbia’s Lululemon-clad moms, this conversation turns typically to a discussion of dress codes, comfort, and the seeming “casualization” of the workplace and society. And of course, the pandemic’s humor-laced anxiety over sweatpants connects to that familiar conversation about yoga, executive suites, dress codes, and brunch. Yet the debate is grounded in deeper questions about why we are so uncomfortable with clothing that is loose, comfortable, unstructured, and untailored in the first place–questions that are deeply rooted in a shared history and the practice of colonization.

When European nations began their colonial expansions into Asia, Africa, and the Americas, Native residents’ clothing– loose, draped, and sometimes revealing–was one visual indicator of difference. Clothing became a symbol, as potent as the color of skin, that the native residents were inferior. In “civilized” society, people contained their bodies – inside a starched, tailored suit for men or a stiffly boned corset for women. To let the body’s flesh go uncontrolled was inappropriate, lascivious, or lazy. In British-ruled India, local residents were required to don tailored, European-style clothing inside government buildings, British-owned recreational clubs, and restaurants. Local dress, such as the kurta pajama (an ensemble of a long tunic, or kurta, and loose pants, or pajama) was banned. Despite the colonial edict, today the kurta pajama is still worn throughout India, both for everyday and for formal occasions. It is telling, however, that when the English adopted the word (and the garment), the pajama was designated for sleep and loungewear, clothing to be worn in private, at home, not appropriate for public society.

Recently, sweatpants have leapt beyond their status as a uniform for exercise or sleep, becoming an object celebrated by the runway. Balenciaga sells branded versions for 800 dollars. Yet when sweatpants are discussed in the fashion press, they are most often lumped together with tracksuits, hoodies, and sneakers in a category dubbed “streetwear.” This term has clear racial undertones; “street” is code for “urban” or Black. Just like the colonial othering of the pajama as inappropriate, the fashion designation of sweatpants as “street” sets them apart from “real” ready-to-wear. As Kerby Jean-Raymond, a Black designer based in New York, pointedly asks: “I just want to know what’s being called ‘street,’ the clothes or me?”

Clothing is a social language. It is the way we make our bodies socially legible to those around us. The pandemic has enforced a sustained reexamination of our bodies and our society. We are now more aware of the space our bodies (and our respiratory vapors) take up in relation to other humans. The lived reality of dressing in isolation has been about comfort, as we search for ways to ease our bodies and our minds during uncertain times. And while it’s funny and reassuring to joke about the way our daily wardrobes have embraced what was once a sign of fashion defeat, we can’t ignore the bias latent in this judgment, particularly in the wake of global protests against racism and police brutality. Bias and racial anxiety surround us, even in those objects which seem innocuous–like sweatpants.

I’m not asking you to retire or to avoid sweatpants. On the contrary, go, wear them, enjoy them, and don’t judge yourself for it. Sweatpants at a Zoom meaning (or even in the office, post-pandemic) don’t signal the end of fashion or the breakdown of society. Perhaps, instead, if we pull them on aware of their history, sweatpants could point to a more thoughtful—and a more inclusive–future.

Solace in Cloth

American Scream
Audrey Bernier
40 x 60 inches
Cotton

Feelings of isolation are perhaps most painfully profound in children and youth. Confusion, fear, and a lack of the comfort that young people need early in life can cause untold trauma. Most youth facing isolation due to separation from family, the color of their skin, or underreported sexual abuse lack the opportunity to creatively express their emotions or advocate for other young people, leaving them to deal with their isolation in a way that further separates them from others.

Since its founding in 2017, the Social Justice Sewing Academy has bridged artistic expression with activism to advocate for social justice. Through a series of hands-on workshops targeted at young people in schools, prisons, and community centers across the country, SJSA empowers youth to use textile art as a vehicle for personal transformation and community cohesion to become agents of social change. Isolation as it relates to social justice is just one of many themes explored in quilts and blocks made at SJSA workshops.

While the insecurity of solitude may never be healed in some children, the magic of the Social Justice Sewing Academy is that it can relieve, even temporarily, a young person’s isolation by creating community and facilitating creative expression. Quilting is often a solitary activity. But at SJSA workshops, youth are empowered to pour their voices, hopes, fears, and dreams into cloth, and to do so surrounded by supportive peers. The quilts they make and the community they build provide solace.

Separated

When youth are behind bars – detained in cages or incarcerated – they are separated from parents and family. In 2020, there are 545 migrant children separated from their parents at the border who may never be reunited, and an estimated 48,000 youth are incarcerated, most for non-violent crimes.

Justice Denied
Kailah Foreman
44 x 50 inches
Cotton

“FAMILIES ARE IMPACTED WHEN CHILDREN ARE SEPARATED FROM THEIR FAMILIES EITHER IN DETENTION OR BY BEING GREETED BY AN EMPTY HOME UPON ARRIVING FROM SCHOOL. YOUNG CHILDREN ARE KEPT CAGED IN THESE CAMPS UNTIL THEY ARE GIVEN IMMIGRATION HEARINGS WHICH THEY MUST FACE WITHOUT GUARDIANSHIP OR LEGAL AID.”

-AUDREY BERNIER, SJSA YOUTH ARTIVIST

Skin

From an early age, young people of color learn that the color of their skin impacts all aspects of their life in America’s white supremacist society. From parents of color having the talk with their kids about the dangers of policing, to seeing children like 12-year-old Tamir Rice and 17-year-old Trayvon Martin murdered on the news, young people of color have fear and feelings of isolation because of their skin color. These youth are crucial voices the Black Lives Matter movement and towards building a more just future for communities.

Black Lives Matter Block
Colleen Haraden, SJSA Adult Block Volunteer
15 x 15 inches
Cotton

“FOR 13 YEARS, I QUILTED THE SAME TRADITIONAL PATTERNS AND FOLLOWED INDUSTRY STANDARD, SPENDING THOUSANDS OF HOURS REFINING MY CRAFT IN THE COMPANY OF QUILTING MENTORS. HOWEVER, IN THESE PRIVILEGED SPACES I BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT CONVERSATIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE WERE DEAFENINGLY ABSENT.”

-SARA TRAIL

Wasn’t Asking for It Block
Made by an SJSA Youth Artivist
15 x 15 inches
Cotton

Silenced

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), child protective services substantiates or finds evidence of child sexual abuse every nine minutes. But only an estimated 30% of sexual assaults are reported to police. Intimidation, gaslighting, and shame often lead to survivors of sexual abuse to keep their story silent, suffering with their pain alone.

I Am Not My Clothes
Carina Cabriales
45 x 50 inches
Cotton, polyester

“I FEEL LIKE AMERICA IS SO DIVIDED AND THE MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES ARE CONSIDERED LESS THAN. BUT WE ARE ALL A PATCHWORK QUILT.”

-ALEX CHAPMAN, SJSA YOUTH ARTIVIST

America is All of Us Block
Alex Chapman
15 x 15 inches
Cotton

Seen

Despite the many kinds of isolation faced by young people, their desire to be seen and embraced by broader communities is palpable. Hope, optimism, resilience, and persistence are also themes of SJSA quilts and blocks, reminding us that young people are capable of overcoming tremendous obstacles to assert their rights to be viewed as full citizens.

Keep On Dreaming Block
Made by an SJSA Youth Artivist
15 x 15 inches
Cotton

To get involved with SJSA by signing up to be an embroidery block volunteer, making a block for our Remembrance Project, or donating money or time, visit sjsacademy.org

An Isolated Space for Worship

AS A YOUNG CHILD I TRIED TO AVOID WALKING AROUND MY GRANDMOTHER’S PRAYER MAT WHEN SHE WAS PRAYING. FOR HER, THE ARCH ON THE MAT PROBABLY ACTED LIKE A REAL DOOR TO THE SPIRITUAL REALM.

Fig. 2. *Prayer Carpet*, 18^th century. Turkey. Wool, 73 1/2 x 51 in. (186.7 x 129.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc., 86.227.120.

Figure 3: *Prayer Carpet*, 19^th century. Turkey. Wool, 70 ¼ x 48 in. (178.4 x 121.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc., 86.227.118.

THE ARCH OF A NICHE IS A PRIMARY MOTIF OF PRAYER RUGS, BUT DESIGNERS AND WEAVERS ENRICHED THIS BASIC ELEMENT WITH A VARIETY OF FLORAL, GEOMETRIC, CALLIGRAPHIC, AND ARCHITECTURAL EMBELLISHMENTS.

Figure 4: *Prayer Rug*, 19^th century. Azerbaijan. Wool, 61 1/4 x 33 3/4 in. (155.6 x 85.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Joseph V. McMullan, gift of the Beaupre Charitable Trust in memory of Joseph V. McMullan, 84.140.11.

Following the Qur’an Muslims pray five times a day: at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, evening, and night. During prayer, worshippers stand barefoot, bow, sit, and place their foreheads on a clean surface on the ground. While these prayers can be performed in the privacy of one’s home, worshippers also gather in mosques, especially on Fridays, and follow a leader (imam) performing the same ritual before them. Small floor coverings such as mats and carpets serve as a portable, clean place for ritual prayers at any location.

While praying, believers turn their faces in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca, the most sacred place for Muslims. In a mosque, the direction of Mecca is usually marked as a niche, called a mihrab, and most prayer rugs incorporate this element as an arch shape within their design. While most prayer carpets are for one person, some large carpets, especially modern machine-made ones, repeat the same arched design, allowing rows of people to pray in individual spaces, in a mosque.

In our present days, COVID-19 has forced us to become familiar with isolation, cleanliness, and purification. Prior to praying, Muslims wash themselves with water, giving attention to hands, forearms, feet, face, mouth, ears, nose, and partially the head. As ablution cleanses the body, the prayer carpet prepares the mind of the believer–and even those around them–for the prayer. The carpet creates a defined space for worship.

As a young child I tried to avoid walking around my grandmother’s prayer mat when she was praying. For her, the arch on the mat probably offered a door to the spiritual realm. I was careful, always, not to pass between her and the direction of Mecca towards which she faced. Isolated on her mat, she could not be disturbed by anyone.

As kids, we would often be told to bring the prayer mat. Little did I know that I was carrying a magic door in my hands. Today as a curator, I see prayer carpets simultaneously as religious and artistic objects. The Brooklyn Museum houses several in its collection, rich in design and technique, and diverse in material.While the earliest surviving prayer carpets are more than 500 years old, most of them date between the 18^th-20^th centuries. Prayer mats made of palm leaves or woven textiles made of reed, cotton, or linen might have served the first Muslims living in hot regions. The use of wool carpets evolved along with traditions of the cooler climes in Central Asia and Northern Iran. Throughout history, several Muslim courts, from Spain to India, produced large-sized carpets that relied on expensive materials, including silk, reaching an extraordinary 500 knots per square inch. Nomadic tribes and villages, on the other hand, produced smaller unique carpets made of wool, often woven by women who drew upon both tradition and personal motifs. Persian and Turkish rugs are the foremost known examples. The arch of a niche is a primary motif of prayer rugs, but designers and weavers enriched this basic element with a variety of floral, geometric, calligraphic, and architectural embellishments. Human forms never appear, as their likeness is forbidden in Islamic religious contexts. Often, a lamp appears at the center of the arch, symbolizing God’s light. In the Qur’an, God’s light is compared to a niche with a lamp.

Here I share a few examples of prayer rugs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection.

An exquisite Persian prayer carpet from 17^th century Iran was made by Qutb bin Kirmani, from the Iranian city of Kirman. His design resembles an illuminated page from a manuscript, with numerous calligraphic bands and cartouches layered over floral patterns (Fig.1). Unusually, he put his name in one of the outermost cartouches on the left. The remainder of the writings includes poetic verses (ghazal) from the famous 14^th-century Persian poet Hafiz and other Shiite religious expressions. Such a complex design was most likely produced by the Safavid court wealthy enough to employ specialized labor and materials.

This rare 18^th-century Turkish carpet comes from Gördes, a prolific carpet center in Turkey. In addition to its startling colors, a small carnation and tulip group, perhaps imitating a glass lamp, hangs down from the horseshoe-shaped mihrab arch (Fig.2). In its large cream-colored border, we see repeating floral arrangements featuring natural flowers beloved in Ottoman art of the 16th century.

This 19^th century rug from Kula also comes from Turkey. As in the previous example, it retains the arch shape of the mihrab niche in its design but adds an architectural quality using two columns on both sides of the arch (Fig.3). When we look carefully, we see that the narrow rectangular area, reserved for putting one’s forehead above the arch, is outlined with a series of small pitchers, a visual reminder of the ablutions that precede the prayer. Below the two columns we also see larger, more defined pitchers strangely placed upside down. The top of the column above their acanthus leaf capital incorporates another peculiar motif, a small domed building next to several circles. Could these tiny renderings of buildings be a visual cue for the Turkish bathhouses that were used by the public for the ultimate cleaning of the body? Or perhaps they denote the tiny birdhouses that were specifically built as a shelter for birds on the facades of Ottoman mosques? Whatever they look like to us, the carpet’s maker and buyer would have recognized them.

In this 19^th century tribal rug from Shirvan, Azerbaijan (Fig.4) the arch in the design no longer plays a dominant role. Instead, numerous schematic motifs (trees) take up the main field. We also notice a comb motif under the arch. It is thought that it refers to the combing of the beard as part of the ablutions for the male worshippers before prayers. Why did the women who made these carpets incorporate such gendered motifs from their pattern stock? Perhaps they had male buyers in mind?

Prayer carpets are well worth a careful look to appreciate their design, colors, unique details, and overall beauty. With prayer being such a regular and essential ritual throughout the day, it is easy to imagine designers and weavers throughout history being inspired to articulate them with such beauty. As companion to worship, this textile performs quite a serious task. Though it may be portable, it effectively manifests a spiritual architecture, defining a time of day, a place in space, and a path to prayer.

Learn more about the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

The Melancholy of the Hand-Me-Down

The quilted works of Brooklyn artist Justin Chance address what he refers to as “the melancholy of the hand-me-down.” When quilts are passed down, they transfer a certain nostalgia. The quilt’s identity lingers in an isolated state of partial newness: imbued by memory, yet ready to imprint again. Chance ventures: “Culture, language, and aesthetics can also be considered hand-me-downs. Quilts are but one example.”

Chance’s pieces are made of fabric, and strictly adhere to a rigorous definition of what constitutes a quilt: a minimum of three layers of fabric (known as the top fabric, batting, and the backing) stitched together either by hand or machine. As in typical quilting, his aesthetic focus lies in the top fabric. The interior component however, is where Chance departs from quilting norms, choosing to spend the majority of his toil laboriously felting this layer by hand. Though never directly seen, the incredible labor required in this extra step imbues the work with additional value, acting as metaphor for what we know, but cannot see, when we are gifted an un-new quilt.

The inner layer, encased in a transparent fabric that is fastened by thread, allows Chance to hide and protect what he deems precious. This layer symbolizes the insular and contemplative experience of making. While it is screened from direct view, we are still able to sense its qualities. Color, pattern, texture, and tone, brought into the studio from the outside world, are subtly evident in the form.

While Chance won’t stray from the structural definition of a quilt, he denounces their quilt identity, referring to them as wall-hangings. “Functionality or care-taking feels antithetical to everything I’m interested in, art-wise. The works are stripped of their utility and therefore cannot exist in the domestic space as such.”

Chance’s wall-hangings invert the known ratios in the equation of quilt-building, with a disproportionate expenditure of labor allotted to the deliberately worked middles. Though concealed, the armature of this stratum is viscerally felt, its density defining the form. There is a capture of memory as a quilt accompanies its owner over years, an accrual mirrored in the worked weight of Chance’s battings. These works reflect how a quilt bears the invisible heft of nostalgia: the unseen middle layer made weighty by human effort.

Learn more about the art of Justin Chance.

THERE IS A CAPTURE OF MEMORY AS A QUILT ACCOMPANIES ITS OWNER OVER YEARS, AN ACCRUAL MIRRORED IN THE WORKED WEIGHT OF CHANCE’S BATTINGS.