‘ANTS’
tapestry / wall HANGING

by Noemi Kiss, Austria, 2014

MATERIAL: old re-purposed oriental rug, overpainted. Acrylic paint
SIZE: W 135 x H 222 cm // W 53.15 x H 87.4 in

UNIQUE PIECE

Wall-tapestry created of a cut-out re-purposed oriental rug. The artist Kiss has concentrated in her oeuvre on out-of-use rugs, damaged rugs, or the unwanted, where she applies her artistic interventions. She is a master in creating an impressive illusion, through overpainting or cutting the re-purposed Persian rugs. Laboriously woven or knotted by hand, oriental rugs tell stories, interwoven in the piece. The ornaments have strong meanings. A rug can be decorative furnishing, a symbol for paradise, or a place holder for prayer. The artist uses this strong symbolism and marries it with interventions of her choice, like cutting, overpainting, or gilding.

During its lifetime a rug is traded, bought, possibly resold, used over decades by various people in various locations….layering the piece with another history of its usage. Foot-worn carpets are witnesses of their past. One cannot simply copy them. Wear and tear, this 'Design of Time' of the rug is the basis for the artwork. Here the aesthetics are to be understood as a state of the art that cannot be produced intentionally. Such surfaces develop slowly and on their own - through human interaction and use. Noemi is a material fetishist and let’s collide the grown with the made. She loads banal substances and materials that feel distant to art with a new meaning. The piece is an art-piece from a body of work, where the artist deliberately uses old, worn-out, sometimes damaged rugs. The Design of Time is visible: in this case, the ANTS rug has a few small holes, giving this artwork its additional charm.