When you think about future, how do you feel? Hopeful? Worried? Or a mixture of both? What keeps you awake in the middle of the night?
These questions were the focus of the workshop series held at SOHO STUDIOS in the first half of 2023. The starting point of this workshop series was quilting as a traditional manufacturing method, which has been used in Anatolia for centuries. The traditional quilts or yorgans offer their users comfort through their healthy materiality and by being decorated with ornaments such as clovers, vines or peacocks – symbolic motifs for prosperity, eternity and peace. Referring to this tradition, the workshop participants put their thoughts and worries about the future on paper in the form of new motif designs. The motifs were then adapted and a new quilt, a new yorgan, was created. This was then produced by the artisans Nahya and Atra Güzelyurt in Turkey.
An installation depicting the collaborative and slow process of making the quilt, as well as the quilt itself, has been created and exhibited. The visitors are invited to spend time on the quilt, browse through the pages of the accompanying publication (made in cooperation with Klara Haug, Antonia Herrmann, Cornelia Eiter, Luca Ruhri and Fiona Albrechtsberger – Institute for the Artistic Teaching Profession, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and thus gather an insight into the making process of this collective security blanket.
