Stoffe

“People who collect and love such objects are certainly attracted by their hybrid nature, manifesting them as memories of physical time, as self-simulacra. No wonder people have ambiguous relationships with them, somewhere along the continuum between contemplation and nostalgia.
[…] what marks out Isabella Ducrot’s tapestries, cloths and fragments is above all the illusion of a very delicate balance being struck between material that already exists in itself and the person who, welcoming its qualities, destines it for a form.” — Patrizia Cavalli

The two hundred and fifty-two textiles in Stoffe make up Isabella Ducrot’s extraordinary fabric collection. The collection touches four continents—from South America to China and Japan, via France, Tunisia, Morocco, India, Pakistan, and Tibet—over a time span from the 9th to the 20th centuries. The fabrics are illustrated through detailed photographic reproductions and information essential to their understanding (areas of origin, age, size, material, weaving). These fabrics have been collected for years. Isabella Ducrot searched for them in markets, on trips, at antique shops, in department stores, on village stalls or by placing winning bids at auction, always moved by a fascination with a specialized craftsmanship whose result is not a work of art in the conventional sense: “while an individual work of art demands inventive, creative intervention from an artist, these shawls are the end-result of a collective culture in which individuals efface themselves in the name of the group. Without this productive chorus and social weave, the product suffers.”