ENG

Gundega Strautmane’s textile art exhibitions are original and noteworthy events in Latvian art life, as it usually is one of the rare occasions when the cultural community is presented with an opportunity to enjoy semantically rich art, which not only in its content but largely even in the motivation of its creation and its physical existence highlights certain issues that have historically been and still are relevant in the local cultural discourse – for example, matters concerning the categories and boundaries of design, crafts, visual and conceptual art and the phenomenology of art perception.

For a number of reasons, education in textile art in Latvia is dominated by a historical tendency. Gundega Strautmane also has been through the process of sitting at the loom and weaving tapestries. At the same time, however, she has sought ways of communicating the spirit of textile art to her contemporaries – people whose understanding was important to her at the time, but who had found it difficult to appreciate the finer points of tapestry. The works shown at the exhibitions are the result of this search for an alternative. These are seemingly decorative units made in the artist’s own technique: little beads arranged on a modestly sized piece of paper in a definite symmetrical system, with a fine thread woven in between them to outline the ornamental rhythms. Fibre is used in the creation of the work, and the technique resembles bobbin lacemaking, which places the artist’s creations within the artisan crafts tradition of textile art. This approach is also validated by the fact that ornamental pattern plays an important role in Strautmane’s art, even though its presence in her work is itself a paradoxical event. That is, she sees her professional future in textile design – contemporary, experimental and industrial.