“One of my oldest dreams came true: to create textile storytelling, to weave oral history into my textiles.” That’s Anna Biro speaking about her latest project Text in Textile, an installation consisting of textiles containing audiotapes.
“I had a collection of audiotapes from a friend of mine,” Biro says. “He is a sociologist and he collected personal memoirs of emigrants, interviewing them about their past. The audiotapes are interwoven in the threads, and under pressure the digital recorders behind the installation activate.”
Born in Transylvania and presently living in Montreal, Hungarian textile artist Biro is one of the few Quebec professional artists who received the Research and Creation Grant of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec for 2009-2010.
Biro is definitely breaking new ground with her project, moving her work from hand-made to what would be considered “hi-tech” in a textile context. She is demonstrating how cutting edge sensor technologies enhance artistic expression and allow for a greater scope to communicate tradition to new generations.
“I consider my textiles mind-made, and hand-processed,” the artist explains while ensconced in her studio on Blvd. St. Laurent. “Tactile pieces that communicate in the same way the hand is reflecting particular mind sets when it follows the movements of the body.”
Another major work is Memory, created with computer-aided design and hand-woven on a computerized jacquard loom. “An old photo of me, taken before I came to Canada, is reproduced in repetition and is broken up by horizontal lines referring to the patterns typical to my Transylvanian heritage,” Biro says. “This layering of the figurative and the encoded abstract implies the process of memory with all its interruptions, gaps and flashbacks. The textile conjoins the memories of my past with who I am in the present and eventually becomes a self-portrait.”
Biro says that the main statement she tries to make is that we can communicate plenty of things through textile art: “Textiles talk to us, we just have to be attentive enough and listen to them.
“In fact, textile art is culture-specific. It has its own history in each culture. It is amazing for example how ancient Persians have woven their carpets: they always left one mistake in the textile on purpose implying that nothing on earth can be perfect. Only Paradise can be perfect.”
Naturally, Biro’s native Transylvanian culture has its own history, with the patterns in Transylvanian textiles originating in the 16th century or even earlier.
“In peasant households textiles used in the kitchen had a system of notations denoting if the owner was married or not,” she says. “Same with textile handkerchiefs. The number and width of stripes on the clothes of a noble man stood for the number and size of the estates he had.
“I reproduce these patterns in modern materials and new colours. My Hungarian ancestors in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania wore these patterns on their daily garments. I strongly believe that the memory of these traditions can survive in the form of a living textile just like in a history book.”
For Biro a living textile (i.e. a skirt, a scarf, an afghan or a shawl) is one that is being used, something that is functional.
“I’m working for people who like to wear precious textiles,” she says. “It is always a pleasure to see my works on people rather than seeing them in museums. That is why I like to work with filmmakers and theatre people: my costumes are reborn each time they are put on.”
Biro’s fascination with the idea of imbedding text in textiles comes from more than just the fact that “text” is part of “textile.”
“I see myself as an interdisciplinary artist,” she says. “My future plans comprise cooperation with authors because there is text in the weave and there is weave in a text. My literature teacher in secondary school would always tell me that literature is like a never-ending fine-woven textile.”
Anna Biro’s Textile Installation is presently being exhibited at 215 College Gallery, Burlington, Vermont. Biro will be in Montreal for Text in Textile at the Montréal Art Interculturel (MAI) April 1 – May 30, 2010. For more details and images of her art, check out Biro’s website.
