Participatory art

I hope for active collaboration from the public, called not only to enjoy the Work but to be its protagonist, building it together with the Artist.

Such involvement not only reduces practical difficulties, making the Undertaking possible, but above all reduces the distance that usually exists between “ordinary” people and Art. In this way personal, social, cultural and spiritual growth can be fostered, in the spirit of awareness and playfulness.

An “Artist” is not necessarily someone who sells their works or is renowned for them. On the contrary: compared with pure consumption, with prevailing homologation, with existing only because one sells or buys, is sold or bought, the Artist can be above all this – better still, in antithesis to deadening massification.

Through art we can choose to realise a utopia: to refuse the norms that commodify us with impunity, rediscovering the pleasure, freedom and generosity of making.

In that case Art could be a song that involves us, and the Artist a person who gives magnificent gifts – first of all, that of helping to improve the way we live, announcing and fostering “changes” through the acquisition of new awareness. The Artist can be a channel for human beings’ sensations, desires and needs, sometimes unconscious yet deep.

The images created would then be the ones “ordinary” people ardently long for, without being able to focus on either the nature or the urgency of that need, which nonetheless remains as inner restlessness, a diffuse sense of lack.

On these premises, Art could be a real healing therapy. We would become aware that, in a very particular way, everyone can and must be an artist, in the sense of “doing well what one does”.

Art would thus be a way of expressing life, a precious way of perceiving reality and sharing one’s perceptions with the rest of humanity.

Let us weave together hopes, dreams, wishes… Let us weave together a handmade world
Let us weave together a world of new relationships… Let us weave together a world of new harmonies
Let us weave together a world of peace

See also: Textile sculptures and Textura.

The terms Fiber Art, Textile Art or Art Fabric cover that vast artistic universe whose favoured expressive medium is thread and whose main technique is weaving.

Their connotations are, one might say, infinite, from which we gather that Fiber Art has a thousand facets and a thousand outcomes.

“Off Loom” specifically indicates artistic production that does not necessarily involve the use of this ancient tool, while suggesting that it nonetheless enters, in various ways, into the dialectic of creativity.

Fiber Art is a “transversal” form of artistic expression that uses thread as its medium (of straw, metal, plastic, wool, string, silk, cotton, glass wool, optical fibres…), using techniques typical of weaving, such as the interlacing of weft and warp, but also printing, embroidery, knotting, collage, the ready-made…

“Transversal” because it draws on suggestions ranging from Futurism to Abstraction, with references both to Geometric Abstraction and to Abstraction tout court, up to Art Informel. Some works can also be described as Arte Povera, in their synthesis of signs and search for archetypes, or as Conceptual.

Some can be traced back to Pop themes, especially in their use of variously emphasised mass-produced industrial materials.

Other artists combine Fiber Art with Video Art.