KNOTENTOPOLOGIE

Bárbara Palomino-Ruiz and Férielle Doulain-Zouari
Collaborative full-room installation, 2020

Knotentopologie emerged from an encounter in Vienna between two artistic practices approaching textiles from different directions: Palomino-Ruiz’s long-standing interest in textile as a system of inscription and encoded information, and Doulain-Zouari’s research into the manufactured object as a mass-produced commodity circulating through global networks of production and trade. Conceived as a dialogue between these approaches, the installation brings material processes, spatial relations, found objects, and sound into a shared field of experimentation.

The work traces the structure of the global textile trade—from sites of manufacture, through maritime transport routes, to places of commerce and consumption. Drawing on the topological language of nodes and edges, it gives material form to the relationships and dependencies that hold this system together, as well as to the inequalities it conceals.

Recycled materials and found objects are interwoven through different textile construction methods, materialising these connections at the scale of the hand. A soundtrack composed from multiple sound sources introduces the multilingual dimension of the artists’ transnational trajectories, each having worked and exhibited across different countries and languages before their encounter in Vienna. Together, these material and sonic elements create a sensory environment: an in-between space in which textile practice becomes a means of examining wider political and economic structures.

Presented at PARALLEL VIENNA as part of philomena+’s exhibition series Carrefour des Possibles.

23–27 September 2020
Curated by Christine Bruckbauer